The New Life

by Tom Crewe

Brought to you by Penguin.

*Shortlist, Debut Fiction, 2023 Nero Book Awards *

London, 1894 . John and Henry have a vision for a new way of life. But as the Oscar Wilde trial ignites public outcry, everything they long for could be under threat.

After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John has finally found a man who returns his feelings. Meanwhile, Henry is convinced that his new unconventional marriage will bring freedom.

United by a shared vision, they begin work on a revolutionary book arguing for the legalisation of homosexuality.

Before it can be published however, Oscar Wilde is arrested and their daring book threatens to throw them, and all around them, into danger. How high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living?

*** This audiobook includes an exclusive conversation between Freddie Fox and Tom Crewe ***

'A very fine new writer' Kate Atkinson

'Electrifying' Anne Enright

'Filled with nuance and tenderness... charting the lives of men and women who inspired not only political progress but an entire new way of living and loving' Colm Tóibín

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Historical, Romance, Gay

Audible Audio

First published January 3, 2023

About the author

TOM CREWE was born in Middlesbrough in 1989. He has a PhD in nineteenth century British history from the University of Cambridge. Since 2015, he has been an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he contributes essays on politics, art, history and fiction.

The New Life is his first novel. Crewe says:

'This is the book I knew I wanted to write long before I actually wrote it. I hope it reveals to readers an unfamiliar Victorian England that will surprise and provoke, inhabited by a generation in the process of discovering the nature and limits of personal freedom, struggling to create a better world as the twentieth century comes into view.'

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I'm all there for the narrative intention behind this book: a story promoting the normalisation, acceptance and decriminalisation of homosexuality in the late nineteenth century - I found the execution bland with stilted writing and the erasure of some of the more interesting historical and intellectual complexities.

The protagonists John Addington and Henry Ellis are thinly-disguised avatars for John Addington Symonds, classicist and critic, and Henry Havelock Ellis, the sexologist, who collaborated on the real book Sexual Inversion. Both were married; both were what we'd now term gay. That's more or less the story of this book interspersed with sex scenes that feel cold and unsexy.

The title comes from the real-life society, The Fellowship of the New Life, which was a sort of utopian catch-all that promoted the idea of a simple life: less competition, spiritual rather than materialist interests, vegetarianism. More interestingly, and where this book doesn't really go, is that this was the origin from which the socialist-activist Fabian Society emerged and, ultimately, the Labour Party. Sadly, this book flattens the political context.

It also erases some of the more problematic aspects of the real Havelock Ellis in the creation of Henry. Ellis was a prominent eugenicist, vice-president of the Eugenics Society in the early twentieth century believing in 'social hygiene' i.e. that people with 'unwanted' characteristics should never be born. He also believed in the not unconnected idea of racial hierarchies with non-Western races and cultures deemed inferior to white/western cultures and race. How much more interesting this book might have been if Henry Ellis had been shown negotiating his belief that men should be free to love other men (and women women) while simultaneously navigating his classist and racist ideologies.

But this book sticks to a simpler and more palatable narrative arc and characterisation so that we can all get behind the idea of sexual freedom. Which is fine: there's no requirement for any author to be a social activist. It just would have made this book more complex and interesting for me.

As it is, and quite apart from the smoothing out of problematic real history, I found the exposition-heavy style and self-conscious prose came between me and the story. This is a book where we need to be fully immersed in the story - I always felt on the outside looking in to what someone had written.

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now Well-Deserved Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2023
An excellent debut with wonderfully rendered characters and an absorbing plot about homophobia in Victorian-era England: The novel centers on a wealthy gay writer, John Addington, who cannot longer endure his closeted life and his marriage to a woman, especially as he is acutely aware that he wrongs his wife and their three daughters by using them as a shield. Instead of breaking apart, Addington decides to break free: Together with Henry Ellis, a doctor who has never had sex, but holds an academic interest in it, he starts to write a book about the lives (and the suffering) of English gay man who at the time were facing criminal charges when found out. Although the book makes a science-based argument for change when it comes to the status and treatment of gay men, publishing the book is of course dangerous, and Addington's intense emotional involvement, his grief and his guilt pose an additional threat... or are his collaborators just not brave enough?

The title-giving "New Life" is the concept of a progressive society in which people can live freely, without repression - a concept many characters in the novel dream of or actively strife for. Crewe does a great job illuminating the historic times, and also the threats, fear and moral dilemmas gay activists and their sympathizers were facing. Not only does he incorporate the real trial of Oscar Wilde and his sentencing for "gross indecency", Addington's character is based on John Addington Symonds, and Ellis' on Henry Havelock Ellis, who both did in fact co-write the first medical textbook on homosexuality in English - and Havelock Ellis was indeed married to a progressive queer women named Edith, just as his fictional counterpart. What the fictional men lack though are the problematic parts of their real-life counterparts: E.g., Symonds supported pederastic relationships and Ellis eugenics.

Still, this fictionalization serves its purpose: This is not meant to be a semi-fictional biography or a historic portrayal (the plots start in 1894, when the real Symonds was already dead), but a story that reveals the torturous circumstances and atmosphere of fear under which gay men lived at the time, how it affected their friends and families, and what it took to stand up against an inhumane societal standard. And when it comes to these goals, the novel excels: Addington's limitless pain is so believable, his wife's terrible situation is crushing, Ellis' inner torment so plausibly portrayed. Minor characters like Edith's and especially Addington's queer lovers are lively, add to the plot and heighten complexity, as they show queer people from different milieus and thus different approaches to the situation. Also, the thriller aspect that slowly comes into play is very effective: Will our heroes, their publisher and Addington's gay lover be prosecuted, will they manage to make a change?

Another positive aspect is how sex is written here: Desire is (as the whole point of the story demands) written plainly and clearly, and while this is not quite Garth Greenwell perfection, it is very well done - and so is emotion. While I'm not sure whether Ellis' sexual deviation - he likes to see women urinate - really makes sense in the context of the story (he won't go to jail for this kink), I see why it was incorporated in the book, and it ultimately didn't bother me as a plot device.

All in all, a great debut, that would also make a great addition to some 2023 prize lists, giving off The Great Believers vibes.

Wanna hear me chat with Tom Crewe? There you go: https://papierstaupodcast.de/special/...
Listen to our discussion on the podcast (in German) feat. bits from my interview with Tom Crewe: https://papierstaupodcast.de/allgemei...

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The New Life is Tom Crewe's debut, a novel full of possibilities. The subject is Havelock Ellis's early work on the study of homosexuality - sexual inversion, in Ellis's phraseology - that Ellis co-authored with John Addington Symonds. Ellis is a fascinating figure. As a socialist and eugenicist, his work on homosexuality takes an interesting hue when viewed in the context of his social reform agenda. Crewe understands this, giving nods to the very real Fellowship of the New Life and dropping us into the progressive milieu of the day. However, as others have emphasized, Crewe oversimplifies the historical context in what I think are unhelpful ways. For one thing, Ellis's views are sanitized, placing his work in what today would be viewed in a more favorable light. The effect is something like Whig historiography: the novel becomes a story of free-thinking reformers, struggling against oppression and bigotry, palatable to the tastes of today. In the Afterword, Crewe suggests his primary aim was to use the historical events as a template to tell a story. That does explain some of his choices, and perhaps the Afterword should have come before the rest of the text to temper expectations. The result is a meaty historical novel, more long-form narrative than nuanced exploration of Ellis's ideas. Formally, this is standard-fare historical fiction. Despite its limitations, I didn't altogether dislike the experience of reading it. The characters are well drawn and I do tend to favor an ideas-forward work, even if the ideas were whitewashed a bit.

[Mimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt so sorry for Henry—someone finally piss on the poor man!

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tom Crewe’s debut novel’s loosely based on episodes from the lives of two men John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis who collaborated on the ground-breaking Sexual Inversion. Published in 1897, as a study it contributed to the carving out of sexology as a relevant field. Significantly, Symonds and Ellis included extensive case studies to argue that sexual relationships between men should be viewed as both natural and reasonable. A risky and radical move at a time when sex between men in England was not only illegal but more commonly represented as abnormal and likely a sign of some form of physical or deep-seated mental illness.

Crewe’s story opens in 1894, centred on two couples John Addington and his wife Catherine who have an outwardly conventional marriage, and Henry Ellis on the verge of marrying Edith who is more than comfortable with her identity as a lesbian. Henry is struggling with issues over sexual arousal and John with his sexual fantasies about other men. Crewe’s engaged in exploring a moment in history that seemed to offer the possibility of extensive social and cultural change leading to whole new ways of living. He follows his characters as they attempt to carve out an existence that will allow them the space to express their true feelings despite the obstacles society puts in their way. At first everything seems possible but then Oscar Wilde is put on trial and people like John become the target of a mass, moral panic.

Crewe draws on a wealth of background material, and includes cameo appearances from historical figures like Edward Carpenter and his lover George Merrill, but sometimes he plays fast and loose with the facts. In crafting his versions of Symonds and Ellis, Crewe makes alterations that definitely render them easier to identify with. But in doing so he glosses over aspects of their realities as individuals whose ways of thinking were rooted in a particular time and place. The actual Symonds and Ellis are fascinating but their belief systems don’t, and can’t, match up with contemporary ones.

At times Crewe seemed to be consciously sidestepping some of the more challenging issues thrown up by Symonds’s and Ellis’s ideas, and I found that quite frustrating. And his narrow focus means it’s not always clear what it is his characters are contending with - there’s too little included on the ways in which prevailing attitudes shaped Victorian notions of what it was to be queer. From a contemporary perspective, the real-life Symonds and Ellis are far more contradictory, controversial figures than’s suggested here: Symonds with his fetish for younger, working-class men, his advocacy of love between young boys and men that poses uncomfortable questions about relations of power and social inequality – a position that became increasingly linked in the Victorian popular imagination with the corruption of youth and rising child prostitution. Then there’s Havelock Ellis’s developing interests in eugenics.

Crewe’s text really comes to life when he’s writing about bodily desire and sexual longing but elsewhere his style can feel a little overdone, almost suffocating. His prose can be rather unwieldy and there’s a tendency to smooth over plot developments so that major incidents carry the same weight as far more trivial ones, all of which can make the narrative feel a little flat and academic at numerous points. Crewe’s writing about important, relevant subjects and I longed to cheer him on but I often found myself plodding through this when I’d expected to be racing.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Chatto and Windus for an ARC

Rating: 2.5 rounded up

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.75* of five, rounded up

The Publisher Says: A brilliant and captivating debut, in the tradition of Alan Hollinghurst and Colm Tóibín, about two marriages, two forbidden love affairs, and the passionate search for social and sexual freedom in late 19th-century London.

In this powerful, visceral novel about love, sex, and the struggle for a better world, two men collaborate on a book in defense of homosexuality, then a crime—risking their old lives in the process.

In the summer of 1894, John Addington and Henry Ellis begin writing a book arguing that what they call “inversion,” or homosexuality, is a natural, harmless variation of human sexuality. Though they have never met, John and Henry both live in London with their wives, Catherine and Edith, and in each marriage there is a third party: John has a lover, a working class man named Frank, and Edith spends almost as much time with her friend Angelica as she does with Henry. John and Catherine have three grown daughters and a long, settled marriage, over the course of which Catherine has tried to accept her husband’s sexuality and her own role in life; Henry and Edith’s marriage is intended to be a revolution in itself, an intellectual partnership that dismantles the traditional understanding of what matrimony means.

Shortly before the book is to be published, Oscar Wilde is arrested. John and Henry must decide whether to go on, risking social ostracism and imprisonment, or to give up the project for their own safety and the safety of the people they love. Is this the right moment to advance their cause? Is publishing bravery or foolishness? And what price is too high to pay for a new way of living?

A richly detailed, insightful, and dramatic debut novel, The New Life is an unforgettable portrait of two men, a city, and a generation discovering the nature and limits of personal freedom as the 20th century comes into view.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

How to define extremity? The greatest extremity? Lust, not as quickened heartbeat or dizzy possibility, but as lagging sickness, a lethargy. Lust as slow poisoning. Lust as a winter coat worn in summer, never to be taken off. Lust as a net, cast wide, flashing silver, impossible to pull in. Lust as a thousand twitching, tightening strings, sensitive to every breeze. Lust as a stinking, secret itch. Lust carried leadenly in the day, dragged to bed. Lust at four in the morning, spent chokingly into a nightshirt. Lust as a liquid mess, dragged into your beard, drying into tendrils, the smell trapped in your nostrils.

In that passage from the very beginning of the book you are clear what this book's greatest strengths...specificity and sensory evocation...are, and what its weakness is: prolixity. (One fewer. Just...one fewer.)

But as a novel, on every story-based measure of characterization, action, world-building (late Victorian London is, in fact, as alien from our world as any spaceship), this first effort from Author Crewe is a wild success. As a salvo notifying us of the arrival of a new vessel, it's head-and-shoulders above most of what I've read in the past few years.

A fictionalization of two real people, who in this book do not meet but do collaborate on an extremely provocative and daring text...Sexual Inversion was its title...that dealt frankly and openly with the shocking idea that homosexual desire is not a perversion but an inversion, an opposite force, to the common-or-garden heterosexual variety of desire. In our rather less interesting realm of blah reality, the two never even corresponded that anyone is aware of. It's to be assumed each had heard of the other, being rather well-known people, but there is not a scintilla of a fact in this story's imagining of the literary work that John and Henry get committed to paper.

Poignantly, Henry Ellis isn't what we'd call gay, but a urophilic heterosexual; it wouldn't send him to jail, like sex with men would John Addington, but it would get him talked about and ostracized. The points of connection between the characters are real, and in Henry's case stem from a sincerely held belief that no one should be shamed for consensual sexual desires. In the 1890s. In LONDON, stuffiest and second-most perverted (Paris, of course, was first) of international brothels. We haven't come to terms with that radical idea yet and it's the third decade of the twenty-first century!

Henry and John's book is cursed, in a sense; it's coming to light at exactly the moment the world's spotlight of attention is glaring on Oscar Wilde's trial for "gross indecency," that most cishet male of crimes. (I mean, the Boer War was grossly indecent, the Native Genocide in the US was grossly indecent, but fucking a man who wants you to do it?) They're all the way through writing it and there's even a publisher willing to publish it. But is this the responsible thing for a family man (John) to do at this juncture? His daughters will likely suffer for the daring act. His wife will most certainly suffer more, and she is one whose suffering has been extraordinarily difficult because, of necessity, it's done in private and John is a scion of privilege as all men are. He isn't unsympathetic to her suffering through their marriage; he feels quite guilty about it; but it does not feel real to him because he is in no way aware of what a woman—any woman at all—confronts and endures by virtue of her sex. Blind, oblivious to his world of mind-bending luxury, he is gobsmacked when his wife demands that he consider her suffering as suffering, even saying to him that she is a receptacle "fitted to receive your waste." That statement, like the concept it arises from, is utterly devastating from any angle you look at it.

So too the Ellises are in some peril if the book comes out. Edith Ellis is a lesbian, and a campaigner for women's rights. Henry is a species of fraud, an expert on sex without a dog in the fight, so to speak, by dint of his virgin's estate. Still, knowledge does not need to be practical or no one would study particle physics. Their, um, unconventional set-up is so by design and not, like the Addingtons' ménage, a jerry-rigged response to reality's exigencies.

The famous Wilde trial, despite its centrality to the events of the novel, appears nowhere on the pages. I was surprised to note this as I finished the read. I'd expected some of it to appear and none except its fact as an occurrence ever did. This, after a moment's contemplation, made me very happy. We're fictionalizing the past any time we read about it, but I think Author Crewe's choice to leave this huge and celebrated event as, more or less, background noise was spot on. This kind of focus, of disciplined intentional limiting of field, isn't common in beginners. It was a delight to find it here.

I did mention that prolixity issue. The novel's about sexuality, and in a time of even greater repression than we are in at present. The sexual events are within the bounds of modern acceptability standards for a novel. They aren't in any unusual configurations for twenty-first century readers of even the most superficial sophistication. They aren't prurient, as in looking on from a remove and deriving judgmental or pleasurable titillation from the acts. But they, like so many things in the novel, are just that three-word clause, that one-too-manyeth ellipsis, too long. As one routinely tutted at for being wordy, I totally empathize. I did find myself thinking, "okay, enough now," more often than I expected to in a book professionally edited.

But, and this is important!, none of that made me feel frustrated or took me away from my focus on the story unfolding. It is a very good story. It speaks, through voices long dead, of the world of today as it was in its borning moments. It is a fine and worthy addition to your To Be Reads if you are at all interested in Victorian sexuality, the price of honesty within relationships, and the incalculable costs in unhappiness and suffering of enforcing conformity.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

I debated about giving this 4.5 stars, as the beginning chapters were abysmally slow - but it quickly picked up about a quarter of the way in, and then I raced to finish it, even though the prose is so exquisite, I am sure at some point I will have to go back and reread it slowly to ponder such more deeply; perhaps when the Booker judges see fit (fingers crossed) to put it on the longlist - it's almost unfathomable it won't be there! It surely will rank near the top of my best books of 2023.

I am usually not a great fan of historical fiction, especially when the novel veers sharply from the known facts, as here - but I'll give allowances for this first time author, as he explains in an Afterword exactly why he wanted/needed to alter the narrative, in order to enhance the story he wanted to tell. And what a story it is!

Based on the real-life characters of John Addington Symonds and Henry Havelock Ellis, who, working separately, composed and published a book entitled 'Sexual Inversion', the first English language in-depth study (and defense of) homosexuality in the English language. Oddly, for one well versed in such matters, I've never read their tome, but that will soon change. (Quick update: I did attempt to read Sexual Inversion - and got about a third through before giving up. The life histories were somewhat interesting but tended to be a bit 'same-y' - but the clinical portions were just too dreary and uninteresting).

Both major characters are sharply delineated, but Crewe doesn't give short shrift to ANY of the secondary characters either - in particular, Ellis' wife's lover, Angelica, and Addington's friend, James, who gives his autobiographical testimony in the exact center of the book, are remarkably drawn and memorable.

I often can go on and on about books I disparage but find it more difficult to examine and illuminate the books I really savor - so I will quit here, only to add - damning with faint praise, perhaps - that this would make an excellent film - or more likely BBC miniseries.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the start of this debut novel, I had mixed feelings - it was engaging - but the sexual descriptions were overpowering real connections to ‘any’ character—
I almost tossed in the towel - I kept ‘hanging-in’….
Eventually… (not quite halfway - but close)- I found myself not only interested but thinking about a specific friend I wanted to recommend it to.

This historical novel (London 1894) is loosely based on two real people: John Addington, married with three children —
and…
Henry Ellis, a virgin, who studied to be a doctor, and had an academic interest in sex. He married a woman name, Edith, a bisexual writer.
They invite another woman into their relationship.

A few sexually graphic scenes made me uncomfortable- (not prudish- but fetishes that don’t interest me).

We get a down-and-dirty experience of the very early naughty days of homosexuality.
Themes explored are love- sex- choices- justice - freedom - self-expression- sexual identity- attitudes- behaviors-
lust - eroticism- marriage - arrangements - vanity - -collaborations— ( through letters)….
Gay men in heterosexual marriages ….

It’s a complex story - that grew on me —
The writing is beautiful—skillful….an impressive debut.

About 3.7
rating up to 4 stars.

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

We're approaching just mid-December, 2022, but I'm already willing to say that Tom Crewe's The New Life will be on my "Best of" list for 2023. It's imperfect, but has so, so much that rings true and is ripe for exploration that I felt oddly thankful as I read it.

Crewe takes us to London in the late 1800s. The trial of Oscar Wilde for sodomy takes place toward the middle of the novel. Crewe doesn't depict that trial. Instead, he uses it as background to explore issues of sexuality and identity at the time.

At the risk of making things sound "soap operatic," let me introduce the main characters—
• John, a respected thinker and writer, who knows he is homosexual, is questioning his marriage and his relationship with his daughters, longing to live a more honest life
• Catherine, his wife, has some sense of who the "real" John is, feels isolated in her marriage and terrified about the effect John's sexual choices might have on their family and their daughters
• Edith, a free-thinker and lecturer on social justice topics, has chosen an unusual marriage structure: she and her husband are deeply connected intellectually, though not sexually, and they live apart while spending much of their time together
• Henry, married to Edith, is also a free thinker and a writer—and fascinated by questions of sexuality, though his own is very narrowly focused and he remains a virgin

Those are the four central characters. When Henry begins a correspondence with John—after reading an essay John has written on Walt Whitman—the two decide that they will write a book in defense of "inversion," using Greek and Roman history, as well as brief interviews with inverts they know or are introduced to. Just as their book is completed and being sent out to publishers, Wilde's trial takes over the headlines and changes the stakes for everyone—authors, spouses, friends, fellow activists—connected to the book.

Crewe's narrative pulls together a multitude of issues—gender, sexuality, class, political resistance, and widely varying concepts of what composes a "good" life—without becoming polemical. The book is written from John and Henry's perspectives, but Crewe makes every character (and there are several important characters beyond the four I've described above) complex in ways that are both engrossing and refreshing. In an afterward, Crewe carefully explains the legal case the story is based on, noting where he has and hasn't followed the historical record.

This title is being released on January 3, which means readers still have time to place an order with their local independent bookseller and to receive the book on the first day it's available. If you do this (and I urge you to do so), carve out a good bit of reading time on January 4 and 5. The New Life is hard to put down once you've entered its world.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the op[inions are my own.

[Barry Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked this but it took me forever, there is absolutely no need for it to be almost 400 pages

[Jennifer nyc · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is long overdue, as I won this in a giveaway with the promise of an honest opinion. I usually give 3 stars to a book I solidly liked, but wasn’t wowed by, either because I’ve read things like it before too many times, or because it was a book that entertained during the reading and then fell out of my head. This was not that. I can still see scenes and characters and I remember the story well. The writing was much tighter in structure than most debuts. (I actually think this might have been a detriment to this author, as I wanted him to break the whole thing open and let the characters breathe more). It was well-researched and smart.

My biggest issue was with the characters. The book focuses on two very different couples, one older with established standing in the community, and by all appearances very traditional; the other young, progressive, and just starting their lives.

This book is about what it was like to be a queer man right before and after the arrest of Oscar Wilde. The older gentleman has been having affairs for so long during his marriage that he barely hides it anymore from his wife, and she has to accept it. The younger man married a gay woman who loves him dearly, and he loves her back. He is queer, and some weight and mystery is given to wondering how. The reveal was disappointing, and compared to the overall politics of the time, didn’t matter to the story beyond the young man’s internal suffering. It would have felt more meaningful if he were gay, too, and handled it differently from the older man, or maybe bisexual and in love with his very gay wife. Instead, his secret was a fetish, and never really went anywhere.

The older man was terribly unlikable, and although I often enjoy learning the depths of unlikable characters, I felt this book lacked personal depth. There were glimpses of real emotion, I can see the author has it in him, but the book felt more guided by his mind than his heart. I hope he can break open his taut, sharp intelligence next time to let the characters fully bloom with emotion.

Also, the opening scene was the most erotic I’ve ever read. I thought I’d won an erotica book! It was so in-your-face intense, never to be repeated in the story in the same way. This is one place where the structural choice didn’t make sense.

I’d be curious to see how this highly intelligent writer develops in his next work, but overall I felt let down in a way that annoyed.

[Louis Muñoz · Rating 4 out of 5]

WOW, I am so looking forward to this book. How many months is it between July and January?!?! LOL

2/12/2023: Just finished the book. 4 stars. Conflicted about this book. More on this later.

[od1_40reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not saying too much as I know a lot of people are currently reading this, or soon will… but it’s fantastic!

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I saw this I thought, "Hmm, I don't know if I have the energy to get through a long, historical novel like this." But it sneakily drew me in with a surprisingly sexy first chapter and after that I was just hooked. I read it for a few days, but I always savored it. While set in 1894, it does not have that flavor of historical fiction where it's winking at you the whole time and saying, "Look, the past! Isn't it amazing?" Instead it is very much concerned with its characters who are all about changing the future. It is a book about activism and change, and despite the drastically different times that makes it feel relevant to any time.

Our two protagonists are John and Henry. John is a well off man in his 50's, married, the father of three adult daughters. With his youngest child about to leave, he realizes that he can finally have a kind of sexual freedom he has not been able to have before, that as long as he can keep his affairs with men away from the servants that he can build a new kind of life for himself. His wife has long known of his status as a "sexual invert," the language of the time, and he sees himself as having given her more than enough.

Henry's sexuality is much more indeterminate for much of the novel. He is a virgin, entirely unacquainted with sex when we meet him on his wedding day. But his marriage is not going to be just any old marriage, he and his new wife Edith want to embark on The New Life, a set of ideals torn from patriarchy. He and his wife will live separately. While they are known for speaking and writing on sex, they do not have much real understanding of it. Their high ideals mean Henry thinks little of it when his wife becomes very close with another woman.

It is a time of great change. Women's suffrage is growing. Walt Whitman is a celebrated poet whose success and work makes gay men wonder if more acceptance is possible. Eventually Henry and John will join forces to write a book together (there is a real book, and these characters are based in part on the real authors) about homosexuality, declaring it not to be a moral wrong but a natural tendency. The work of the book and the question of its publication will have significant impacts on their lives and make them question how strongly they are willing to commit to their ideals and who they are willing to hurt in the process.

John and Henry are presented to us as opposites in many ways. John is bold and Henry shy. John is gay and Henry is (probably) straight. (We do eventually find out Henry's deal, which is a kink that today we find not all that unusual though it's still not generally accepted.) John is used to being able to get what he wants, Henry often defers to others. But they both use marriage as camouflage and the book considers this in many ways.

The consideration of activism and ideals, the question of timing and strategy, is the central one of the novel. Do you push forward to do the right thing because of the potential for some small benefit even if there is a likelihood for a much larger loss? How do you move public opinion forward? When are your allies really your allies and when are you just a convenient figurehead for the moment? I found all this fascinating and true to life, and even if John and Henry can be rather unsubtle about these things, that also feels true. These questions often lack subtlety, they lack clear answers, they just present one bad option and another bad option with no clear victory.

I was also impressed with the way John's story in particular gives us questions to grapple with that we still have. About what gay men owe the women they married to protect themselves, about the disparity of power when wealthy gay men take poor lovers. This latter one has so many angles, the way it can achieve a kind of safety, and yet there is something predatory about it as well.

I do not read a lot of historical fiction, particularly lately. I am only more picky these days, requiring a book to really do the work to keep me invested. But this book never felt like work.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction

’These are different times.’
‘Not different enough.’
‘Not yet. And meanwhile we must live in the future we hope to make.’

In many respects this is an impressive work but something bothered me throughout and I think it was that the novel, subject matter aside, read like a book that could have been written in the 1890s when it was set. And I’m no great fan of the Victorian British novel. I've since read a short story by the author in the Granta Best of British Novelists, and I hope he decides to continue with that form rather than novels.

And for a 21st century touch I tried to explain my issues with my new bestie (the first of our soon to be Generative AI Overlords) ChatGPT who, after some discussion concluded:

I see what you mean now. You're saying that in some books, the characters' inner thoughts are portrayed as overly eloquent and sophisticated, which doesn't feel realistic to you. Instead, you prefer authors like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, who write characters' inner monologues in a more stream-of-consciousness style that more closely resembles how people actually think and speak.

That's a valid preference and it's great that you've found authors whose writing style you enjoy.

And then wrote my review for me (both the test above and below entirely unedited):

"A New Life" by Tom Crewe is a 400-page quasi-historical fiction that has received a lot of deserved acclaim. The book is impressively researched, imagined, and written, and is based on the lives of Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds.

However, it may not be for everyone, especially for those who are not fond of this genre. The book reads like a 19th-century novel with the failings of that era. In particular, the characters' thoughts read like they think in the style of a novel rather than the psychological realism introduced by modernist writers like Joyce and Woolf. This might be a drawback for some readers who prefer more nuanced character development.

Despite this, the book still manages to be a compelling read. The author has done a great job of bringing the historical period to life, and the descriptions of the setting are vivid and evocative. The book's characters, based on real-life figures, are well-drawn, and their struggles and conflicts are engaging.

Overall, I would rate "A New Life" by Tom Crewe with 3 out of 5 stars. While it has its merits, the book's shortcomings may not appeal to all readers. However, if you enjoy historical fiction based on real-life figures and are interested in the lives of Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds, this book may be worth checking out.

Though oddly when I made some suggestions for tweaks ChatGPT decided to review The Overstory instead. So maybe there is hope for the human race yet - except this was GPT3….

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Totally recognize the historical importance of this book in relation to homosexuality’s history of being criminalized and stigmatized. I also found the theme of different relational configurations (e.g., how queer men and women navigated outness or not) mildly intriguing.

But, the writing itself was so dull and bland. Felt like a slog to get through and couldn’t differentiate much between the characters. Some of the sex scenes were well-written but that didn’t make up for the book as a whole. Also, I know people may say the following is a product of the book’s time and place, though I did eye-roll at an attractive man being described as “clean and white” and a man who is described as unattractive being called “a little too dark.” And at least one instance of casual anti-fat bias. I would not highly recommend this book.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back when I was a literature student at undergraduate and graduate level, religious beliefs and sexual morality in the Victorian and early Modernist periods were my research specialty. So a novel set in 1894–6, about sexologists, and putting all the sex the Victorians left out back into a stylistic pastiche, was bound to appeal to me. But this is also, on the sentence level, just exquisite writing – everything from the inclusion of physical detail to the use of verbs and semicolons. (There was literally only one paragraph, in the penultimate chapter, about traffic and rain, where I didn’t like the punctuation and found it a bit overwritten. The meaning-laden names of the two lovers are the only other slight misstep I’d note.)

While this is not a fictional biography of John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis, it is heavily inspired by their life and work, in that the main characters are sex researchers who write a book called Sexual Inversion drawing on ancient Greek history and containing case studies of homosexual behaviour. Crewe’s John Addington and Henry Ellis both wonder if there could be a new, liberal model of relations between the sexes where love, sex and marriage aren’t of necessity bound up together (and might there even be an intermediate sex?). Ellis provides the medical background and political zeal; Addington the personal motivation.

John Addington: “No man should live his whole life in opposition to his nature”

Addington has a comfortable but currently chaste marriage with Catherine, by whom he has three grown daughters. Early in the book he goes to Hyde Park to watch young men swim naked in the ponds on a summer day. Here he meets Frank Feaver, a younger, lower-class man who approaches him, thinking that John looks lonely and that he, Frank, wants a rest from the constant search for money and affection. Frank becomes John’s live-in secretary, but Catherine and the servants know what his true place is in the household.

Ellis has married Edith but they live separately, Edith with their ‘friend’ Angelica Britell. After a failed attempt at consummating their marriage, they gave up on sex. It took Henry some time to realize that Edith is also an “invert,” not as openly as Angelica, but they are sexual partners. He has his own sexual “peculiarity,” one I’ve encountered in fiction before (in Memoirs of a Geisha), but I don’t know if it has a name or an explanation and I’m not inclined to research it further.

For quite a bit of the book you have to wonder if Ellis, too, is homosexual and denying it to himself. In those days, anyone who dared to write in defence of the matter was likely to be accused of inversion himself, so in agreeing to co-author the book he was already setting himself up for scandal and rejection. But the point is that Ellis feels anything should be a matter for conversation, that studying human sexual impulses normalizes them in all their variety.

I felt the novel lost momentum slightly halfway through, when Oscar Wilde’s trial puts everyone on edge; not long afterwards, the tension ramps back up when their own book becomes the subject of an obscenity trial, and each man has to decide what he’s willing to give up in devotion to his principles.

Crewe includes letters, some of them historical, plus extracts from Wilde’s trial transcripts. He also gives careful consideration to all the women involved, e.g., Catherine and her daughter Janet (“I am very sorry, Papa, if you have suffered.”). I would have welcomed a bit more on Edith and Angelica, though they are a strong subplot. In calling for women to be added to a future edition of Sexual Inversion, Angelica writes herself into the history.

This is deeply, frankly erotic stuff, particularly in the opening chapters with both of the main male characters attempting to act on their sexual frustrations. I was reminded most of work by Colm Tóibín, and, while I’ve not read Alan Hollinghurst, he is by reputation another author I’d consider a readalike. Go ahead and save a place for The New Life on this year’s Booker shortlist, and sign me up for whatever Tom Crewe writes next.

[Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This book is a difficult one for me to review, because I enjoyed it, but it wasn't anything like I expected. Spanning the late 19-century London, this novel encompasses the two protagonists, John Addington and Henry Ellis. Both men are married to their wives, but their marriages are very different to say the least. When both men decide that they want to write a book about homosexuality and talk about how natural it is when it comes to human sexuality. However, this is during a time when London criminalized homosexuality and Oscar Wilde has been arrested. What could go wrong?

This book is very densely written at times, but the times I enjoyed it were steamy, provocative, and downright immersive. This book is a bit too smart for me, there I said it. So if you like books that have a detailed and atmsopheric prose highlighting Victorian Englad, with some massive amounts of steam, this book could be for you. I'm not sure how to recommend this one, because it wasn't my favorite, but I also enjoyed reading it too. I'm curious to see what others feel about this one!

[Katie Lumsden · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic, intriguing, complex, powerful novel that I’d highly recommend, especially to those interested in late 19th century history.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a photographer, I can sometimes be remarkably unobservant. I bought this book in a local (to me!) bookshop because I was in there browsing (as you do) and it caught my eye. I liked the quote on the back: “We must live in the future we hope to make”. However, I completely failed to notice the fairly large sticker on the front saying “Special Independent Bookshop Edition - Signed with Exclusive Content”. It was only when I got it home and saw the signature that I realised. Apparently, it’s a first print, first edition, which is all slightly wasted on me because I think of a book as the words not how they are delivered. Of course, this is the only edition I have seen, so I can’t be entirely sure what the exclusive content is, but I imagine it is “A Selection of Historical Sources that Inspired The New Life” that comes at the end after the acknowledgements.

This is an interesting book to read. Tom Crewe clearly had a story he wanted to tell. In order to tell that story, he has played fast and loose with history and with characters. Most notably, the book’s two main characters, John Addington and Henry Ellis are based on two real life people, John Addington Symonds and Henry Havelock Ellis. But the characters in the book are extracts of the the real life people: Crewe takes from them what he needs in order to tell his story and ignores the rest. He also sets his book after one of those two real life people died (in order to coincide with the trial of Oscar Wilde), so historical accuracy is clearly not top of his priorities and he makes this clear in his afterword. This, I know, is going to seriously annoy some people. But, for people like me who know nothing about either person, it’s interesting to do a bit of Googling and read about them, and I ended up with two different takeaways from the novel: one is the story that Crewe tells and the other is a bit of a fresh understanding of an issue I didn’t really know about.

That’s sort of a win-win in my book, although I can understand that people more knowledgeable than me will react differently to seeing just parts of these fascinating men being portrayed.

The story concentrates on Addington and Ellis and their decision to write a book, “Sexual Inversion”, in which, writing about homosexuality, they intend, as the book’s blurb explains, to “challenge convention and the law”. Addington is himself an “invert” (the term used to described a homosexual at the time). Ellis, meanwhile, is not an invert and has, really, only an academic interest in sex. Their aim is that the book they write will demonstrate that homosexuality is natural, has always been part of the human experience, and that, therefore, making it a crime is wrong. In alternating chapters, we follow the two as they become aware of each other (not physically meeting for a long time), work on their book, struggle to get it published and then live the aftermath of that publication.

I thought it was an excellent story and that it was really well told. I responded well to the writing style here and enjoyed the book as much for the way it is written as for its plot. At times it is a bit slow moving, but I didn’t find that put me off at all because I was enjoying the words I was reading. There are several sexually explicit scenes, including the very start of the book, but these never feel gratuitous.

And it has given me a new motto for life: “We must live in the future we hope to make”.

[Charlotte (Romansdegare) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blog post about The New Life here

The New Life is the story of two men, Henry Ellis and John Addington, who are in the process of writing a book that seeks to destigmatize and decriminalize homosexuality in Britain, and in the process, bring about a future that is more accepting to many nonnormative forms of desire - a New Life. The collaboration between the two men is both deeply personal (Addison is gay, Ellis is married to a women who herself has a female lover) and attached to the political context of the day (Oscar Wilde's trial occurs about halfway through the novel). As the publicity around the trial intersects with Ellis' and Addington's plans to publish their book, they must both grapple with the book's potential - the potential it has to create the better world they dream of, and the potential it has to land them (particularly Addington) on trial themselves.

This setup allows The New Life to explore a series of really big questions through the contrasts in how Addington and Ellis face down what their book will mean once it is out in the world. How do our political commitments intersect with our private lives? What are the limits of empathy in activism? What satisfactions can be found in personal victories at times when political ones are out of reach?

In answering these questions, the novel engages in what I think of as queer alternative history: it depicts characters (in this case, actual historical figures) responding to these questions in ways shaped by the mores of their time; but it is also very cognizant of what a 21st century reader believes and seeks in a story about queer desire and acceptance. I was particularly intrigued, here, by just how many different responses we got to see to Addington's and Ellis's book: the two men themselves, but also Addison's lover Frank, his wife Catherine, Ellis's wife Edith and her lover Angelica... and what struck me, at every turn, is that none of the characters had points of view that were meant to easily align with those of a modern audience, yet at the same time, they all had feelings that were rendered incredibly easy to empathize with - even when they felt diametrically opposed to my own.

Henry and Edith's storyline was perhaps the one that intrigued me the most, as it felt like unexplored territory in fiction. They enter into a marriage almost as a social experiment in how it can support them intellectually and vocationally, without imposing limits on them romantically or sexually - I think in 2024 we might recognize them as intending to practice relationship anarchy while also exploring the benefits of the legal structure of marriage. But it turns out that neither Henry nor Edith know how to reconcile their experiment with their experience of desire (Edith's for other women, Henry's... being more inscrutable to himself at first, eventually resolving somewhat to an exploration of kink). And I found the apposition of John, as a gay man with clear political convictions around that identity, with Henry to do some really fascinating work around how individual desire informs political commitment.

Above and beyond all that, it is STUNNINGLY written. I could not put it down. Here's just one example, that describes Henry and Edith's first meeting:

They had found in each other something neither had found in quite the same way with anyone else. Which was understanding - not in the easy sense of agreement, but in the greater and deeper sense of responsiveness. The first time they ate together [...] he told her about his time in Australia. Edith's first question hadn't been about the journey or the landscape or the people or how he'd managed and wasn't lonely; instead - he could still see her face, looking calmly over the top of a glistering green candle - she had simply asked, "What did you read?" Which was the only really important question, and the only one he felt properly equipped to answer.

Whew. I have a book hangover to end all book hangovers, even a week later.


-------
Original review:

Full review to come- this book made me think and made me feel and gave me a truly unprecedented litfic hangover. This makes a worthy companion read to the romance genre: it's speaks to modern readers about the historicity of queer desire in bold and fascinating ways, across a broad spectrum of experience. I'm hope I'm eventually able to produce a review that does it justice.

[Peter Boyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This accomplished first novel is set late 19th century London. John Addington is a successful author who cannot hide his attraction to men. Married with three grown children, he begins a relationship with a handsome young fellow named Frank, an arrangement his spouse grudgingly puts up with. Henry Ellis also has a wife, Edith, though their union is unconsummated. She lives separately with a girlfriend, while he wrestles with a perversion that he is too embarrassed to discuss. The men begin to correspond via letter, and decide to write a book that argues for the freedom to live a homosexual life. Friends and family warn against publishing such a controversial text, though they remain undeterred. That is until Oscar Wilde's imprisonment for gross indecency, which threatens to scupper their brave plans.

The New Life is an impressive piece of writing. Crewe captures a fraught and fearful time for gay men, when homosexuality in the UK was not only taboo but illegal. The paranoia and shame that these characters feel is eloquently expressed. While I had sympathy for Addington's situation, I also felt sorry for his poor wife, whose situation was considered secondary to his own urges and desires. I struggled to understand Ellis, what made him tick - though it can be argued that he is still figuring it out for himself. I must admit that though I believe the book is very well-written, the actual plot didn't always compel me. The first chapter is stunning, a breathless description of an illicit encounter on a crowded train - but it was so good that the rest of the novel suffered in comparison, and the pacing lolled in parts. A bright debut, I expect bigger things to come from Tom Crewe.

[Daniel Myatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful glimpse into the lives of John and Henry. Two men in Victorian England who decide it's time to make a difference and write a book that will hopefully change everything....

Beautifully written and filled with heartbreaking scenes, this book will linger in my mind for a long time.

[Charles Edwards-Freshwater · Rating 1 out of 5]

The fact that this sub 400 page book took me well over two weeks to read says a lot.

On paper this should've been 100% my cup of tea. I'm fascinated by the Victorian era, interested in queer representation of the time and tend to love novels that imitate the writing style of the era.

Unfortunately, in many ways this fell totally flat for me. After an erotically charged first chapter, the story quickly descended into plodding nothingness without the richness of prose to make it worthwhile. Basically, I found myself bored every time I picked it up, which is a real shame as I feel like there's a really good idea here.

All the characters felt like they merged into one, and I often felt like the plot skirted around parts that could be interesting instead of approaching them head on. It's also surprisingly long for a book which doesn't have much driving it forward.

Ultimately, I'm aware that this book will probably delight a lot of people so my rating seems a little mean. It's already been highly applauded and there's every chance that I missed something really special about it. However, it was a book that I considered DNFing about 30 times and which never really got better despite me troopering through, so I can't recommend it.

[X · Rating 4 out of 5]

On one level: loved this, beautifully written à la Regeneration by Pat Barker’s sort of naturalistic alt-historical fiction, at a certain point it became unputdownable to the extent that I thought I was going to read a chapter or two before bed and now it’s 3 hours later and I’ve finished the book.

On another level: you know what, starting your author bio with your birth year is a real fuck you to everybody else born in that year who *hasn’t* written & published a fantastic book!! As someone who is irrationally competitive with strangers who are roughly in my age bracket, Taylor Swift and AOC are already bringing me down with their comparative career successes……….. I really don’t need this guy piling on ☠️

[Nadine in California · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took a while for me to warm up to this book, but I'm so glad I resisted the urge to DNF. When I started it I'd never have suspected that it would become so unputdownable. I think my problem in the beginning was my mild-to-moderate aversion to the late Victorian world - the way its industrial advances strengthened the culture's worst barbarisms, dressed up in moral superiority. (A tradition that never dies.) Not to mention the repulsive runaway male facial hair - what was up with that??!!

I think that starting the book in an explicitly sexual way was a bold move, and it worked for me; at first I wondered why I was invading Addington's privacy so flagrantly, but this discomfort paid off in spades as I came to know him better and watched him evolve. The more I think about this book, the more I realize that all the writing decisions Crewe made, large and small, overt and subtle, worked perfectly together to make the reader viscerally feel the painful clash between repression and passion and the fragile and fraught birth of 'the new life' - which is still fragile and fraught today, even if we have come a long way.

My one disappointment in the book echoes the character Angelica's point - that female 'inverts' (such a sad word) are treated as non-existent. What a depth of why's that would uncover. I wish Crewe had found a way to feature Edith and Angelica's story a bit more.

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had not read anything about this book when I started it. And so, naïvely, while reading it, I was giddy with excitement that, maybe, it was leading to some kind of alternate 19th century London, kind of like the one depicted by Hanya in Part 1 (Washington Square) of To Paradise. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself.

What an extraordinary book on absolutely every level. I stopped counting the number of times I sent texts to my friends asking them to read it RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. Which, frankly, only happens a couple of times out of of the circa 100 books I read every year. And so, yeah, goodreads friends, this may very well be, for me, the LGBTQ novel of the year. I kept thinking while reading, had I been born in 19th century England, would I have been a John or a Henry?

As to what I was referring to in the first paragraph of this review, you may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. I hope that, like John and Henry, someday they’ll join us.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books)]

What a disappointment: some good writing, especially the sex scenes, but otherwise one of the most boring books I’ve ever tried to get through. The two main protagonists were utterly, monotonously indistinguishable. Dull dull dull. Bailed at the 35% mark.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intelligent and informative. Sexual and seductive (oooof). And even though it is all these things, the dialogue was its low point: not at all natural; too bogged down with its own thesis. But anyway, it still made for a stimulating read.

[Amina · Rating 4 out of 5]

✰ 3.75 stars ✰

“Everything I have ever read in books or seen in plays; everything I have seen in my life of ordinary love, I have known in inverted form. It cannot ever seem unnatural or abnormal, because it has been natural and spontaneous in me.” Jack’s eyes were soft with tears.

“Thank you,” Henry said. “That is the end.”

The New Life by debut writer, Tom Crewe is the fictionalized adaptation of real people and events, loosely based on John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis, who created quite a stir in the literary world in the early 1890s, when they co-wrote a book called Sexual Inversion. The writing is crass, but simple and easy to read, using words like prevaricated that may have caused me to stumble at times, but so caught up was I, in the affairs of John Addington with a much younger Mr.Feaver, and Henry Ellis' feeble attempts of nurturing a more intimate marriage with his college sweetheart, who wishes to seek solace in the arms of another woman, that it did not rattle me so - it spurned me on.

And even once the book is published and released to the wild, as we are swept away into public trials of defamation and unsolicited narratives of personal pleasure that once held a special place in the narrator's heart and now to be reviled and dissected by discerning eyes - a deep sadness was palpable in its' wake. The solemn note that with the prospect of a new life that embraces all - where does one go from here, when the world is not ready to accept it.

“We have twenty-six now. All anonymous. They have astonished me. Some make me want to weep; I want to seek these men out and speak with them. Others”—he smiled—“make me jealous, make me see how much I have missed.”

Carpenter laughed. “I think it may be best,” he said, “to see both sides in life. To come through suffering to pleasure.”

From their first innocent meeting, to their eventual understanding of what they wished to convey, to the eventual release, and finally, the apparent result to it - with one swell of a move - John and Ellis' lives were intertwined, as each of their own personal lives unraveled around them. The plot weaves with deftness through the trials of their own makings - in the court and off. The characters that play an integral part in their lives also lend a helping hand in what will finally leave us with the notion that the hope for the New Life is not quite within our grasp.

The conflicting views that arose between the two authors was so very palpable - one wanting to still hide their thoughts on the matter in fear of rejection of society, and one - so very keen and adamant that he must speak up for the masses, despite the outcome. It is with a bold and firm touch that these emotions were evoked through the passages of their personal familial actions and eventually, when judgment was passed in the public eye. Both characters were well-nuanced with facets to their personalities and social situations that made me endear to their plights in their own distinctive way.

“When everything that had been dignified, rationalized, was made gross and tawdry, was torn down and trawled through the gutter.

When the days had the steepness, the terrifying altitude, of a nightmare. When every prejudice uncoiled and rose from its pit, showing the inside of its ugly throat. Leaders, letters, speeches. Handbills, placards, pictures. Chalkings on walls. Crowds on corners. Jeerers. Jurors.

When John felt himself exposed, sprawled on the slimed wreck of his privacy, at the world’s mercy.

Except it was not his privacy.”

John, married for a number of years, father to three, with a wife - who knows about his illicit affairs with men - who stays, despite the fear of public humiliation - simply for face in society. It was with strange candor at how John reverted to Jack in the story, when he spent time with his amour, Henry. It is a toss-up of whether I should sympathize with John - for being in a marriage he did not want - or feel upset with him - at how he shattered all his family's feelings about him - when they learnt the truth.

And perhaps it was old age, perhaps it was frustration, perhaps it was an innate and keen desperation - a willful plea that John was so adamant in staying true to his own desires and determined to have his book's narratives be shared - to be universally acknowledged and appreciated. And it read like a quiet yet literal in a literal sense to be accepted in the eyes of man - and when you see him clash heads with Ellis - one who felt that he had done his fair share and let sleeping dogs lie, I was often left at a stalemate at whose feelings I should empathize with more.

“And I cannot regret forcing you on, Henry, otherwise you would have left me where I am. So do not think you are saving me. You are not. The trial may save me. But if you keep with your decision, you will force me into a prison far worse than any the law controls.”

“This is what frightens us,” Ellis said. “You are too absolute.”

Ellis was also a conundrum of a character; his point of a view often veered into a melancholic doldrum feeling, but I understood where it was coming from. His was a different approach - a man who didn't feel the romantic inclinations in bed - one that felt that he was satisfactory to his wife and it made him feel inadequate - ill-tempered and uncaring. And to see how, these two minds then clashed over whether it was fair to have other's experiences be shared - that it was necessary for these intimate details to be read - so others could find something in them to relate to.

“Perhaps it was how Wilde had felt, before he gave way utterly. (Was he, perhaps, feeling like this when Henry had seen him, absorbed in his book?) It was how Carpenter and Addington had felt; how many of the inverts who’d submitted their histories had felt: desire burning you up, too hot to touch.

He understood this: what it is to burn, and to dare not touch.”

Towards the ending, it does gravitate more towards Oscar Wilde's very much prominent hearing, but it did not deviate me from the actual continuation of what fate awaited Jack and Henry. I enjoyed reading it, because I also learned something new that I was not aware of. Historical fiction that stirs an interest in me, after reading, is always a special kind. And the conclusion may have been with a heavy heart and a judgmental eye for their actions, but how the concise and sharp writing evoked clearly the sentiments of everyone involved - with a very poignant point of showing the repercussions of their book's release - it made me glad that I didn't remove it from my tbr and gave it a chance, after all.