Aubade

by Kenneth Martin

It is the beginning of the summer, and Paul has just left school. Estranged from the people around him and unable to communicate with his parents, he feels lonely and unloved. But his life suddenly changes when he meets a young medical student whom he renames Gary. Their relationship develops through the long hot summer, to reach its climax with the approach of autumn.

Kenneth Martin was only sixteen when he wrote Aubade, using his poverty-stricken adolescence as well as people he knew for the book’s central conflict and characters. Given those, one can say that Aubade is the ultimate gay young adult novel.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Classics, Queer, Gay, Historical, British Literature

158 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Kenneth Martin was born in Belfast in 1939. He grew up in Bangor, Co. Down, where he was adopted into a poor family. He began work on his first novel, Aubade, at the age of sixteen, and when it was accepted for publication by Chapman and Hall with an advance of £100, he moved to London. Aubade, published the day after Martin turned eighteen in 1957, was a modest success, selling well enough to run into a second printing in 1958 and was also published in America. Martin followed his debut with two more novels, Waiting for the Sky to Fall (1959) and A Matter of Time (1960), but the reviews of these novels were largely disappointing, and Martin turned from fiction to journalism. He moved to the United States in 1970 and earned degrees from Columbia University, the University of Minnesota, and San Francisco State University. In 1977 he became an American citizen. He returned to fiction writing in 1989, publishing Billy’s Brother with Gay Men’s Press, which also reissued Aubade as part of its Gay Modern Classics series. A fifth novel, The Tin Islands, followed in 1996. Kenneth Martin lives and works as a psychotherapist in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Andrew H · Rating 3 out of 5]

The original 1957 edition, so much of its time, has a gentle blue-grey cover with two boys on a beach, which says nothing about the content -- unlike the version attached to this review. Aubade was written when the author was sixteen and was published just after his eighteenth birthday. This is a book, therefore, written without much direct experience of the world. It tells of the first love between two young men, Paul and John, thought this is restricted to brief chapters at the end of the novel. Clearly, Martin devoted time to plot construction, but much less into characterisation. Consequently, characters are underdeveloped and their psychology is thin. This is a bold book, given the attitude to homosexuality in 1957, and a very daring book for a teenager to write. But it is a light read, an early attempt at the coming-out genre.

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

the kid was 16 when he wrote this. 16! so despite being all hand-wringy and clunky and gay = sad, you get an extra star just for being written by a 16-year old. good job, book, and good job Kenneth Martin! color me impressed.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

(This review had spelling and errors corrected and some phrases rewritten to improve readability but no opinions or judgements were changed - October 2025).

I adored this short novel, I thought it beautiful and true, and more important then the author's age (which was used as selling point it was published and is almost the first thing mentioned by GR reviews, even me!) is the time it was written and the place the author emerged from and, in this rather long review, I am going to try and place the novel and author in context.

First I would like to quote the synopsis for 'Aubade' from its 1957 book-jacket:

"Aubade, a first novel, was written last year when the author was sixteen; but, although extreme youth in writers is fashionable these days, this is book whose merits would be remarkable whatever the author's age. It is a haunting evocation of one summer in the life of a boy; a story with delicacy and compassion.

"Paul, the hero, is lonely and unloved, ashamed of his weak father, tormented by his ambitious mother. At the beginning of the summer he meets a medical student whom he renames Gary (this is wrong, he first spots Gary at church a number of years prior to the summer described in the novel when he finally gets to know him. Both synopsis writers and many GR reviewers are careless readers - Liam). The book is the story of their relationship. It develops in the heat of a lovely summer, and reaches its climax with the first sign of autumn.

"Mr. L.A.G. Strong (being completely forgotten today I refer you to his Wikipedia entry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard..., for context but, like many Wikipedia entries, I am sure it probably leaves out all the most interesting facts about his private life) writes of Aubade: 'I can't recall a writer under twenty who goes about the major job of a novelist so deftly and with so little fuss. Here is a most interesting variant on the theme of the angry young man, by the youngest contributor-and one of the sanest'."

Understanding the description of Mr. Martin as an 'angry young man' is essential to understanding how both the author and the novel were seen on publication. It is hard, even for most UK readers to accept how ghastly mediocre, rundown, second rate and bankrupt so much of British life appeared, particularly to young people growing up in the 1950s. Rationing only ended in 1954, the idiocy of the Suez Crisis occurred 1956, the UK in the 1950s was nothing like the USA of that period. John Osborne's play 'The Entertainer' (1957) rather than Colin McInnes 'Absolute Beginners' (1959) is the ur-text for understanding the world Kenneth Martin and his novel emerged from. The other important to remember about Mr. Martin is that he was born in Belfast and grew up in Bangor in Northern Ireland and I can assure you that until you grasp the dour suffocation of small town sabbatarien Ireland in the 1950s you have no idea of what real boredom and ennui are. Martin emerged from Northern Ireland's Protestant heartland. and originally the novel gave no details of Mr. Martin's background and no specifics are given in the novel for its setting. Protestant Northern Irish writers were seen as British writers (Southern Irish Protestant writers were Anglo-Irish) only 'Catholic' writers were seen and marketed as Irish. But by deracinating both Martin and his novel it was possible for his publisher to present Martin and his novel as part of the then dominant 'angry young men' trend in English literature.

Interestingly the same removal of all traces of Irishness can be seen in the first novel by William Trevor, 'A Standard of Behavior', published in 1958. I make no other claims of similarity between the two books. 'Aubade' is much better than 'A Standard of Behavior' but six years later Trevor published 'The Old Boys' which was the first of a string of dazzling works which would establish him as one of the best 20th century writers in English. By 1964 Kenneth Martin was on the verge of abandoning novel writing.

All this is to emphasise how important the time of Aubade's composition and setting (clearly Bangor Northern Ireland even though it remains unnamed) is for understanding the novel. To take an extreme comparison try extracting Goethe's 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' from its 18th century German setting and retain any worthwhile understanding.

Just as 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' is a novel of the strum und drang movement which sought to define/discuss/emote about the future of Germany and a culture in crisis. 'Aubade' is a novel of the 'angry young men' school of writing that was searching to break away from the pieties of a stagnant and bankrupt UK culture. It is also a remarkable portrait of same sex love and attraction between two young men but it was not, and even at the time, was not seen as a novel about homosexuality or homosexuals (now the novel is rightly recognised as an early 'gay' classic but to discuss how it was seen in 1957 is such a term is anachronistic). 'Aubade' was a novel about understanding a new generation of young men (because that is all anyone thought about in 1957 but I'll say more about the novels misogyny in a moment). The fact that the two main characters, Paul and 'Gary', have a homosexual relationship was unremarkable, particularly in the UK were a whole educational system had been built on complicated admitted, and unadmitted, homoerotic impulses. This is not a coming out novel, or at least not as would emerge later. The boys homosexual attraction is treated openly and honestly, but it could be seen as just a 'phase' because the boys are c. 18 and 21.

Interestingly when the novel was published (by Chapman & Hall the publishers of Evelyn Waugh a very respected publisher) it attracted a good deal of attention because of Mr. Martin's youth but, although interviewed extensively, he reports that at no point was the 'homosexual' plot ever mentioned. It is so hard to go back into the almost byzantine double think that surrounded the subject back then, never mind delineate the differences between attitudes in the UK and USA at that time, in the way 'homosexuality' was thought about or discussed.

All of that is a prelude to warning readers in the 21st century not to imagine that this is a 'gay' novel that in anyway resembles what they might think is a 'gay' novel.

The other aspect is the novels misogyny and the way Paul, in particular, treats one girl, will shock readers now (and which I make no excuses for). Unfortunately reading so many of the 'great' anti-establisment 'rebellious' authors of the 1950s, 60s and even 70s now it is impossible not to be shocked by their invariably misogyny. That Kenneth Martin didn't see beyond the prejudices of his time is unfortunate, but he was only 16 and living in provincial Ireland so I think he deserves to be cut a little slack for failing to be more advanced then, for example, Jack Kerouac in 'On the Road'.

A great many GR reviewers don't like Paul because they find him self centred, self indulgent, self absorbed and very unsympathetic. I don't know if Kenneth Martin knew that he was writing the portrait of an at times unsympathetic prig, but he certainly wrote, to me, a very honest portrait of late adolescence. To me it reads very true, maybe because I am older, I am neither surprised nor shocked that a teenage boy is a huge self dramatising pain in the ass. I am sure I was at that age. He is not kind in his portrayal of Paul's parents but, if you read a bit about Kenneth Martin's background, this is not surprising. Clearly Martin was exorcising his own demons.

I liked and enjoyed this novel immensely and maybe my own experiences growing up in Protestant seaside town outside Dublin in the 1970s informs my judgement. Although at the time I would have thought how different the 1970s were to the 1950s they both seem now, within the context of the 21st century, far more similar than dissimilar. I do think it is a novel which can give great pleasure still but it must be read on its own terms.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really more of a 4 on its own merits, but it is absolutely astonishingly well-written for a 16 year old, so gets an extra star for that alone. Yes, the prose style and language is simplistic, but the story is also fascinating: the awakening to his homosexual nature by a teenager in the mid-50's in the UK. If one remembers that such was still very much illegal back then, it is even more remarkable, especially that the ending, while sad, is by no means the tragedy one would expect (i.e., no one commits suicide or dies). On the basis of this, I am eager to read Martin's second novel, written when he was only 18.

[Kyle C · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible book. I loved both the original novel published in 1957 as well as the author's foreword added in the 1988 reprint. The novel itself, written by a sixteen-year-old Kenneth Martin, is—impressively—both emotively raw and stylistically restrained. The protagonist is Paul, a sullen high-school graduate working over the summer and waiting for his examination results. His father is a taciturn retired mailman; his mother is a voluble housewife who keeps pressuring Paul to go to university. Paul, however, just wants to smoke cigarettes in his room, swim alone in the ocean, and go to the cinema. He gets into an argument with his best friend and refuses to speak to him for weeks; he picks up a job at a tobacco shop and reads Plato by himself. He's deeply antisocial and repressed, fascinated with an older boy he noticed in church, but unable to understand and articulate his romantic attraction. Like some modern-day saint Paul himself, he innocently thought how "he longed to convert him to Christianity"—but this is just sublimation of his unacknowledged infatuation. Wrestling with these desires, Paul becomes monstrously callous. He sleeps with a woman and then discards her immediately afterwards; he distances himself from his old friend and hopes that years later they might exchange letters without ever meeting again; his father has a stroke and his first thought that he will be happier with fewer household arguments, and he is comforted to hear that at least his father loved him (even if he feels nothing for his father). He so desperately needs tenderness and validation but has become hardened and cruel. It's an admirably precocious work, mature and edgy storytelling, devoid of adolescent melodrama and overblown pathos.

The foreword is even more amazing. Writing about his childhood, his public notoriety as a teenage prodigy publishing gay fiction, and his subsequent career as a journalist, Kenneth Martin is disarmingly honest and fabulously witty. With terse candor, he describes his childhood poverty sharing a bed with his mother in Oedipal language: "I replaced my father in my mother's bed, and slept with her until the night I told her she smelled." More luridly, he later recounts how, "I stopped taking her seriously when she found accumulated deposits of semen on my bedclothes and tried to make me ashamed of masturbating, although could not name aloud the activity she was blaming me for or explain what was so pernicious about it." In one hilarious moment, he describes how, trying to project brash confidence, he pretended to a journalist that he had a split personality. In another moment, he shares how he once fainted when introduced to Rosamund Lehmann. Understandably, he had to decline an invitation to dine with Somerset Maugham. He had a brief friendship with A.N. Wilson but was snubbed when it became clear he was love with Wilson's boyfriend. The foreword reveals a character much like the protagonist of the novel—a repressed, painfully sensitive boy playing the role of rebellious enfant terrible.

This is a beautiful novel by a profoundly underrated writer.

[Graham Power · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aubade is a flawed novel which is nonetheless more affecting than countless other novels that are technically far more accomplished but say precisely nothing. Kenneth Martin wrote it in five weeks in the summer of 1956 when he was sixteen. It’s a largely autobiographical gay coming-of-age story about Paul, a boy from a working-class family, who has just left school and meets and falls in love with a slightly older student.

From a strictly literary point of view it would be very easy to pick Aubade to pieces but that, I think, would be to miss the point in a big way. For all its stylistic naivety and stilted dialogue it possesses a sometimes uncomfortable emotional honesty that could only have come from a young author writing truthfully about his own experience. Had Martin waited to recollect his youthful experience in tranquility the result might have been more polished but, I expect, would have lacked the raw edge which is such a vital part of this book.

I was genuinely moved, not so much perhaps by the writing itself, as the fact that a working-class gay teenager in the viciously homophobic Britain of the 1950s had the courage and self-belief to write it at all. This might not be a literary response but it is a real one and, whatever its shortcomings as fiction or literature, I expect this novel will stay with me long after I have forgotten many much more formally skilled ones. Sometimes what touches the heart has less to do with how ‘well written’ something is (always a value judgement, of course, and by no means necessarily a permanently enduring one) as what the writer is saying and when s/he wrote the book and why. Historical context and biographical background are not irrelevant and can actually deepen our understanding and appreciation of a piece of writing. This is certainly the case here and I recommend the 1989 GMP edition as it contains a long and fascinating autobiographical introduction by the author.

I’m grateful to a fellow Goodreads contributor for making me aware of this novel and very glad to have read it. It’s no masterpiece but deserves to be known by anyone interested in the history of gay literature.

[ALEARDO ZANGHELLINI · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not particularly memorable for me, and I didn’t come to care a great deal about the characters, but it held my interest. One of its merits is perhaps its rawness, in the sense that it’s a teenager writing about teenagers, so you get the unfiltered perspective: no one can accuse the author of romanticising adolescence here! Then again, who’s to say that the immediate account of a 16 yo’s life by a 16 yo is more authentic than the account of the same author mellowed by age? Who’s to say a 16 yo knows or understands himself better than his future adult self will know or understand him? One suspects the main character might have been a little more likeable, had he been written a few years later. Still, a book to read if you are interested in gay literature milestones.

[Amper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning novel. Aubade (‘a song or poem greeting the dawn’) perfectly encapsulates the awkwardness and emotional intensity of early adolescence.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

See a review at:

SpeakItsName Review

[Jonah Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most honest book I’ve read in awhile. Capturing that proximity to someone you love but can never actually have. Bittersweet, like the end of summer itself.

[Lana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate many things in books but none touch me as deeply as the vanity of love

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such an important book culturally and I enjoyed it. One of those forgotten gems that more people should read.

[Martyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars was how I initially felt the moment I finished reading it, but reflection makes me wonder whether it could be upped to four. But I'm going to leave it at three for now. There is much about it which is reminiscent of Forrest Reid. The setting, the characters, the mood, and even the binding, feel designed to imitate the 1940s editions of the Tom Barber trilogy. Was Forrest Reid one of Martin's influences?

But this story lacks something. It ends in a rather depressing way and the whole book just feels dreary. Gary and Paul's interactions are never really described in enough depth to bring their relationship to life, to make their love seem credible, or to provide a sufficient injection of warmth or lightness to offset the gloom of the rest of the book and to make it all feel worthwhile. We don't get to spend enough time with them. You have the build up, you look forward to them finally pairing up, and then it is over before you know it. It's all a bit of an anticlimax.

It's interesting hearing the customs of another era, or of that locality, like the seeming habit of straight boys pairing up to 'go out' together as though they were in a relationship and being treated like they were an item by their parents. And the very negative definition of the term 'homosexual' is also interesting.

You can picture a lot of the scenes in your mind even though the text is quite simple. But the most vivid scenes which stick in your memory don't involve Gary. It is Paul's parents and house, Mrs Mackenzie and Bryan, and the shop and its owner, which stand out as being the strongest features of the book. The love interest is overshadowed by all the rest. I think that is what is wrong with the book. The balance is wrong. As it stands Gary could have been left out entirely and the book would have been stronger for it.

[Mei · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aubade is a French word referring to a song or poem that is sung or recited at dawn, usually expressing the feelings of a lover as he bids farewell to his departing love with the rising of the sun. And that's exactly what is portrayed in this book, a love separated by occasions of life but also existing a wall created by social pressure coming from an extremely religious society. It also shows complicated family structures but what stood out for me was the importance that the book had at the time it was published, because religion had the power to repress people, making it normal for homosexual people to have to repress themselves, so it was a book that was beautiful to see how much love managed to overcome the wall created by religion and society.

[Alex Diez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you remember the summer after you finished high school? Did you work? Did you have a romantic affair? Your first date, maybe? Did you end the summer wondering how your new life would be like? A 16 years old Kenneth Martin answered all this questions at a time when homosexuality was still a crime punishable by law in the UK and Ireland. This book is a milestone anyone interested in gay literature should read.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was written by a 17 year boy in Britain in 1957. Paul is a clearly an angry young man, having bad relationships with both parents and not having any friends of any consequence. This all changes when he meets Gary/John and they develop a close friendship and bonding. This book is both touching and frustrating but it is very much of its time and any sexuality is circumspect. However, in 1957, it was brave and daring nonetheless and the gay protagonists do not meet unhappy endings..

[Alex Valent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt very sweet and melancholy. I wish Gary and Paul’s summer took up more pages and their love was more of a concept than a fully fleshed out relationship. Martin sort of told us of their love rather than showed us, but he did write the book at 16 and it’s basically a first draft so he gets a lot of credit for that feat. Aubade was definitely ahead of its time.

[mr. methadone]

Pretty dull, but I understand how important this must've been in context.

[Siina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an interesting book for the reason that the writer was sixteen when he wrote this around 1957 and not to forget - it's a book about homosexual love. Even though I gave this book two stars, it's mostly because of the style (or the way it's written) and not so much about the plot. The writing is very simple and it took no time to read this. It isn't written in a bad language per se, but writings-wise it's poor and neutral. Nothing is really described and it's mostly about asking and answering with little variation to verbs and such. Hardly ever did it feel that the story took place in the 1950s, if you don't count the rock'n'roll twisting and the lack of modern gadgets. This was actually a great surprise and the way homosexuality was handled was almost modern.

I hated Paul and somehow I had hard time picturing this happening in the Great Britain. He was a nasty personality and the way he talked to his mother and whatnot was plain shitty. The book and Paul especially were emotionally detached from real life. Aubade wasn't really a chauvinist story, but Paul surely was acting like women were less than men and his almighty attitude really made him repulsive. Also, the appreciation of medicine was weird, but perhaps suited for that time. In a way the book is a child of that time and there's nothing wrong with that. It would've just needed richer style and logic to make it work better. "Gary" was a better character, though it would've been essential to know his age, since he described himself as old, but I take it he wasn't that old. Either way, this surely was interesting for it's age if nothing else.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty clunky in terms of style and delivery, but a commendable effort for sure considering the author's age when he wrote the book. Reading his introduction/reflection shed a lot of light on the story's creation. It was also super interesting to read about his life during the time the book was published.

[Armen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's good considering He wrote it when he was just 16. It's 3.5 stars

[Geet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great short read though slow to start and a hurried end