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After Brock
In Paul Binding's 'After Brock', Pete, a talented and intelligent schoolboy, though an outsider in both home and school life, enters and wins a quiz show 'High Flyers' a name that is to resonate throughout the rest of his life. One December night after watching his mother perform in the Mikado with a local amateur dramati society he meets Sam, an attractive and flamboyant boy, somewhat of a misfit with whom his infatuation is instant. They begin a tempestuous friendship seeking a world removed from the difficulties of home Sam's alcoholic mother and Pete's frayed relationship with his unappreciative family. They confide in each other with almost everything. They become obsessed with UFO's and otherworldly phenomena, inseparable until one day they embark on a journey sparked by a sighting of something deep in the Berwyn mountains but this event leads to a terrible betrayal. Thirty-five years later Pete's own son, Nat, disappears and is found in that very same place. A scrupulous journalist appears and, suspecting foul play, is determined to find out what led Nat there and why
294 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 23, 2012
10 people want to read
About the author
Paul Binding
31 books27 followersPaul Binding (b. 1943) is a novelist, critic, poet and cultural historian. After spending his early childhood in Germany, he returned to be educated in England and studied English Literature at Oxford. He has been a lecturer at universities in Sweden, Mississippi, and Italy and was a managing editor for Oxford University Press and an editor for the New Statesman. His first novel, Harmonica’s Bridegroom (1984), was well reviewed by critics and earned accolades from novelists James Purdy and Brian Moore. Other novels have included Kingfisher Weather (1989); My Cousin the Writer (2006), chosen as book of the year by Francis King and deemed a ‘masterpiece’ by the Spectator; and, most recently, the critically acclaimed After Brock (2012).
Besides his novels, Binding frequently contributes reviews to The Independent, The Times Literary Supplement, and others, and is the author of several non-fiction works, including Lorca: The Gay Imagination (1985), St. Martin’s Ride (1990) (a memoir), Eudora Welty: Portrait of a Writer (1994), and a study of the artist in Ibsen (2006).
For more than twenty years, Binding has been involved with the promotion of Scandinavian literature and culture. His latest work, Hans Christian Andersen: European Witness, is forthcoming from Yale University Press in April 2014. He lives in Shropshire.
Besides his novels, Binding frequently contributes reviews to The Independent, The Times Literary Supplement, and others, and is the author of several non-fiction works, including Lorca: The Gay Imagination (1985), St. Martin’s Ride (1990) (a memoir), Eudora Welty: Portrait of a Writer (1994), and a study of the artist in Ibsen (2006).
For more than twenty years, Binding has been involved with the promotion of Scandinavian literature and culture. His latest work, Hans Christian Andersen: European Witness, is forthcoming from Yale University Press in April 2014. He lives in Shropshire.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 8, 2024
(corrected and improved, for readability and clarity, but not altered - July 2024).
This a beautifully written 'English' novel, and I emphasise its Englishness because it is central to setting and the characters and because Paul Binding is a very English novelist as anyone who has read Harmonica's Bridegroom or the Stranger from the Sea would know. The problem is that because Binding is known as a 'gay' author (his works on Lorca and Hans Christian Anderson are still essential reading) this work is presumed to be a 'gay' novel and it isn't, though the confusion is understandable when you read, for example, the opening paragraph of the Goodreads synopsis:
"One December night after watching his mother perform in the Mikado with a local amateur dramatics society, Pete meets the attractive and flamboyant misfit Sam, and his infatuation is instant. They begin a tempestuous friendship seeking a world removed from the difficulties of home life: Sam’s alcoholic mother and Pete’s frayed relationship with his dysfunctional family. Inseparable, the boys embark on a journey sparked by a sighting of something deep in the Berwyn Mountains; an event that leads to a terrible betrayal."
It is not inaccurate but it misrepresents what the novel is about. I quote from the back cover of the book itself:
"When eighteen-year old Nat Kempsey goes missing in the wilds of the Berwyn mountains, his disappearance disturbs secrets that his father, Pete (the Pete referred to in the paragraph above - Liam), has kept for thirty five years. He himself was first drawn to this remote land at the same age for reasons both unearthly and unexplained, and at the same time all to human."
The first version might indicate some teenage M&M action the second version doesn't because this isn't about teenage boys fumbling with each other's trousers, or even emotions. This is a novel about families and about a father son, about their love and problems and how problems that won't go away or remain secret. It is a much more layered and interesting novel than a novel about teenage of boy-on-boy sexual awakening. Teenage boys can be friends, even deep friends and they can hurt each other without there being even an allusive whiff of homoeroticism in the tale. There are other secrets to be kept, denied and avoided except queerness.
It is also almost a 'historical' novel in that the friendship between Pete and Sam takes place during 1973 energy crisis and the three day week, matters that might be utterly familiar to me and Mr. Binding's generation but are a mystery to most English people under 60 and completely unknown to readers (and reviewers) in the USA. But that 1970s setting is essential to the novel, like its setting in the Berwyn mountains of Wales. Paul Binding is an author exceptionally sensitive to place (again I can only insist on Harmonica's Bridegroom and Stranger from the Sea in reference and support) in his writing. His descriptions are mostly minimal but they set the scene in both time and place wonderfully.
My final word is to reflect that this is also a novel which deals with celebrity though as a cultural phenomena celebrity had yet to grow up and, like Audrey tried to do in The Little Shop of Horrors, consume the world.
This a wonderful novel, it is not a 'gay' novel for all that Mr. Binding is a gay man, but a novel that should be much better known. If you have not read anything by Mr. Binding (and despite my unallowed admiration I acknowledge that my having read three of his novels places me in a tiny minority) I would happily recommend this though if you do want that gay or allusively homoerotic setting go for one of his earlier novels.
This a beautifully written 'English' novel, and I emphasise its Englishness because it is central to setting and the characters and because Paul Binding is a very English novelist as anyone who has read Harmonica's Bridegroom or the Stranger from the Sea would know. The problem is that because Binding is known as a 'gay' author (his works on Lorca and Hans Christian Anderson are still essential reading) this work is presumed to be a 'gay' novel and it isn't, though the confusion is understandable when you read, for example, the opening paragraph of the Goodreads synopsis:
"One December night after watching his mother perform in the Mikado with a local amateur dramatics society, Pete meets the attractive and flamboyant misfit Sam, and his infatuation is instant. They begin a tempestuous friendship seeking a world removed from the difficulties of home life: Sam’s alcoholic mother and Pete’s frayed relationship with his dysfunctional family. Inseparable, the boys embark on a journey sparked by a sighting of something deep in the Berwyn Mountains; an event that leads to a terrible betrayal."
It is not inaccurate but it misrepresents what the novel is about. I quote from the back cover of the book itself:
"When eighteen-year old Nat Kempsey goes missing in the wilds of the Berwyn mountains, his disappearance disturbs secrets that his father, Pete (the Pete referred to in the paragraph above - Liam), has kept for thirty five years. He himself was first drawn to this remote land at the same age for reasons both unearthly and unexplained, and at the same time all to human."
The first version might indicate some teenage M&M action the second version doesn't because this isn't about teenage boys fumbling with each other's trousers, or even emotions. This is a novel about families and about a father son, about their love and problems and how problems that won't go away or remain secret. It is a much more layered and interesting novel than a novel about teenage of boy-on-boy sexual awakening. Teenage boys can be friends, even deep friends and they can hurt each other without there being even an allusive whiff of homoeroticism in the tale. There are other secrets to be kept, denied and avoided except queerness.
It is also almost a 'historical' novel in that the friendship between Pete and Sam takes place during 1973 energy crisis and the three day week, matters that might be utterly familiar to me and Mr. Binding's generation but are a mystery to most English people under 60 and completely unknown to readers (and reviewers) in the USA. But that 1970s setting is essential to the novel, like its setting in the Berwyn mountains of Wales. Paul Binding is an author exceptionally sensitive to place (again I can only insist on Harmonica's Bridegroom and Stranger from the Sea in reference and support) in his writing. His descriptions are mostly minimal but they set the scene in both time and place wonderfully.
My final word is to reflect that this is also a novel which deals with celebrity though as a cultural phenomena celebrity had yet to grow up and, like Audrey tried to do in The Little Shop of Horrors, consume the world.
This a wonderful novel, it is not a 'gay' novel for all that Mr. Binding is a gay man, but a novel that should be much better known. If you have not read anything by Mr. Binding (and despite my unallowed admiration I acknowledge that my having read three of his novels places me in a tiny minority) I would happily recommend this though if you do want that gay or allusively homoerotic setting go for one of his earlier novels.
January 13, 2021
Would a gay author lead his readers on? Yes, if it serves some wider aim. Paul Binding evolves the characters in After Brock so as to voice ideals that have little to do with sexuality. These ideals, as the shared values of a political class, find their echo in Western cultural life, so a book that takes up that echo has a certain appeal.
Whatever one thinks of this, the key flaw lies in the fraught task of turning ideas into people. It's hard to think the Paul Binding whose Lorca: The Gay Imagination traced Lorca's sexuality so finely through his poetry could be the same man who here dismisses same-sex love. But one of the values his story stresses is conformity.
The plot is a complex parallel: 18-year-old Nat, lost in the hills along the Welsh border, lives an adventure akin to his father's some decades before. It turns out the father, Pete, endured a trauma when he was Nat's age. An aggressive reporter who puts it all together also stands in for readers as the stern judge of modern society and the British state upon the lives of father and son.
The teens in the story learn to embrace the judgments of society as they grow, and to forge emotions into a cold slag of indifference. When Nat faces prison, for example, his father accepts it without fight or feeling. So does Nat. I'm not kidding.
A big part of the plot evokes the erotic love young Pete feels for his buddy. He later writes it off as a teenage dabble, to be tossed aside after A-levels for a life of sexual conformity. How mature. Late in the book the futile life of a hastily drawn gay character justifies the shape-shifting by which gay or bi males turn straight.
The characters are lost within their own minds. Responsive only to the demands of an alien world, their personalities are steeped in an abiding obedience to impersonal values. This is the way slaves think, not grown men; but the writing portrays it as a virtue.
It might be said that something proper, even British, lies in the peremptory stoicism and low key masochism found in Nat, Pete and the others. But in fact these are the trademarks of a debased, reactionary, global culture. It's all put to poor use. The men's inner lives are not plausible, their dilemmas too often forced by unlikely plot twists.
Binding's ugly yarn is a slap against not just gay and bi men, but humanity as such. Aside from those interested in the effect of neoliberalism upon popular culture, I cannot recommend such a poorly conceived novel.
Whatever one thinks of this, the key flaw lies in the fraught task of turning ideas into people. It's hard to think the Paul Binding whose Lorca: The Gay Imagination traced Lorca's sexuality so finely through his poetry could be the same man who here dismisses same-sex love. But one of the values his story stresses is conformity.
The plot is a complex parallel: 18-year-old Nat, lost in the hills along the Welsh border, lives an adventure akin to his father's some decades before. It turns out the father, Pete, endured a trauma when he was Nat's age. An aggressive reporter who puts it all together also stands in for readers as the stern judge of modern society and the British state upon the lives of father and son.
The teens in the story learn to embrace the judgments of society as they grow, and to forge emotions into a cold slag of indifference. When Nat faces prison, for example, his father accepts it without fight or feeling. So does Nat. I'm not kidding.
A big part of the plot evokes the erotic love young Pete feels for his buddy. He later writes it off as a teenage dabble, to be tossed aside after A-levels for a life of sexual conformity. How mature. Late in the book the futile life of a hastily drawn gay character justifies the shape-shifting by which gay or bi males turn straight.
The characters are lost within their own minds. Responsive only to the demands of an alien world, their personalities are steeped in an abiding obedience to impersonal values. This is the way slaves think, not grown men; but the writing portrays it as a virtue.
It might be said that something proper, even British, lies in the peremptory stoicism and low key masochism found in Nat, Pete and the others. But in fact these are the trademarks of a debased, reactionary, global culture. It's all put to poor use. The men's inner lives are not plausible, their dilemmas too often forced by unlikely plot twists.
Binding's ugly yarn is a slap against not just gay and bi men, but humanity as such. Aside from those interested in the effect of neoliberalism upon popular culture, I cannot recommend such a poorly conceived novel.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews