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Nova Scotia House: A Novel
Brought to you by Penguin.
He said he would understand if it was too much for me, that I could leave him, that I was young, I should be living, I said to him, I am living.
Johnny Grant faces stark life decisions. Seeking answers, he looks back to his relationship with Jerry Field. When they met, nearly thirty years ago, Johnny was 19, Jerry was 45. They fell in love and made a life on their own terms in Jerry’s 1, Nova Scotia House. Johnny is still there today—but Jerry is gone, and so is the world they knew.
As Johnny’s mind travels between then and now, he begins to remember stories of Jerry’s of experiments in living; of radical philosophies; of the many possibilities of queer love, sex and friendship before the AIDS crisis devastated the queer community. Slowly, he realizes what he must do next—and attempts to restore ways of being that could be lost forever.
Nova Scotia House takes us to the heart of a relationship, a community, and an era. It is both a love story and a lament; bearing witness to the enduring pain of the AIDS pandemic and honouring the joys and creativity of queer life. Intimate, visionary, and profoundly original, it marks the debut of a vibrant new voice in contemporary fiction, and a writer with a liberating new story to tell.
He said he would understand if it was too much for me, that I could leave him, that I was young, I should be living, I said to him, I am living.
Johnny Grant faces stark life decisions. Seeking answers, he looks back to his relationship with Jerry Field. When they met, nearly thirty years ago, Johnny was 19, Jerry was 45. They fell in love and made a life on their own terms in Jerry’s 1, Nova Scotia House. Johnny is still there today—but Jerry is gone, and so is the world they knew.
As Johnny’s mind travels between then and now, he begins to remember stories of Jerry’s of experiments in living; of radical philosophies; of the many possibilities of queer love, sex and friendship before the AIDS crisis devastated the queer community. Slowly, he realizes what he must do next—and attempts to restore ways of being that could be lost forever.
Nova Scotia House takes us to the heart of a relationship, a community, and an era. It is both a love story and a lament; bearing witness to the enduring pain of the AIDS pandemic and honouring the joys and creativity of queer life. Intimate, visionary, and profoundly original, it marks the debut of a vibrant new voice in contemporary fiction, and a writer with a liberating new story to tell.
Audible Audio
First published March 20, 2025
About the author
Charlie Porter
15 books72 followersCharlie Porter is a writer, fashion critic and curator. He has written for the Financial Times, the Guardian, The New York Times, GQ, Luncheon, i-D and Fantastic Man, and has been described as one of the most influential fashion journalists of his time. Porter co-runs the London queer rave Chapter 10, and is a trustee of the Friends of Arnold Circus, where he is also a volunteer gardener. He lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 850 reviews
June 19, 2025
Okay, 2025 has been a great reading year so far, but this is without question the most memorable book I’ve read in a while. A queer manifesto that’s sex-positive (especially for a novel about the AIDS epidemic), sad, radical, and unapologetically non-conformist.
I didn’t want it to end. It’s the kind of novel I want to live in. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine reading anything else after this.
I didn’t want it to end. It’s the kind of novel I want to live in. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine reading anything else after this.
July 22, 2025
While this is a beautiful story about the deep love between two people during one of our darkest times in queer history. This is yet another story tarnished by the fact that freedom in our community means polygamy, freedom in our community means you can love a person but that person won't be enough physically to you, freedom in our community means gay saunas and multiple sexual partners because being in a relationship is too much to ask
Leaving that aside, the story is furthermore tarnished by an insufferable prose, a prose that aims to be poetic but ends being pretentious. I wrote a couple of lines in the style of the narration of this book
"A storm brew, the thunderous storm, he stormed into the room, a thunder, a bang, a boom; a bada bim bada boom, he thought of the big bang, his banged me in the sauna door, he brewed coffee, he banged me on the kitchen wall; as the storm grew. Maddening, sickening, raging, striking, wonderful that's what he thought as I thought as he said that I said that I thought that he thought that we thought that they thought that I thought as he banged me in bedroom door as the big ben banged"
As you can see a bunch of soup letters which made me even dizzier while listening to the audiobook
Leaving that aside, the story is furthermore tarnished by an insufferable prose, a prose that aims to be poetic but ends being pretentious. I wrote a couple of lines in the style of the narration of this book
"A storm brew, the thunderous storm, he stormed into the room, a thunder, a bang, a boom; a bada bim bada boom, he thought of the big bang, his banged me in the sauna door, he brewed coffee, he banged me on the kitchen wall; as the storm grew. Maddening, sickening, raging, striking, wonderful that's what he thought as I thought as he said that I said that I thought that he thought that we thought that they thought that I thought as he banged me in bedroom door as the big ben banged"
As you can see a bunch of soup letters which made me even dizzier while listening to the audiobook
February 5, 2026
la plume je peux pas jsuis dsl j’avais trop envie pourtant
May 15, 2025
love the story it wants to tell, but absolutely despise the way it’s written. makes me feel physically ill trying to get through a sentence, it’s like a drill against my skull
January 4, 2025
In this heart-rending debut novel, writer and fashion critic Charlie Porter has created a lasting literary testament to queer love, loss, resistance and perseverance in the shadows of the AIDS crisis.
The story follows forty-eight year old Johnny Grant as he looks back to his relationship with his partner Jerry Field, who was his senior by 26 years and passed away nearly three decades ago. It was in Jerry's house and garden – 1, Nova Scotia House – that the pair fell in love and faced the devastating virus that eventually took the latter's life, and it is here that Johnny continues to stand vigil to the world they knew and built together. As Johnny's memories jog between the then and now, we are brought into the heart of a moment in which individuals like Jerry reimagined the possibilities of love, sex, friendship, community, and sustenance; a moment whose energy and ethos he – and, in our turn, we readers – must attempt to restore and reinvigorate in the present.
Both a love story and a lament, Nova Scotia House evinces the enduring grief of the AIDS pandemic while also honouring the radical creativity of queer life, the kind that resisted assimilation and capitalist exploitation, and drew strength from its marginality and survival even and especially at the worst of times. Porter's distinctive prose here allows him to translate the emotional, psychological and political valiance of the people and the period he writes upon with grace, and affords grace and reprive to the overwhelming sense of survivor's guilt that envelops the community he speaks to and about.
The affective power of the writing here also owes, in part, to how rooted it is in lived history: Johnny and Jerry's story, for instance, seems to subtly echo the relationship between Keith Collins and Derek Jarman; the 'die-in' they stage along with their friends recalls the work for ACT-UP activists and artists like David Wojnarowicz; and though the setting of the story is never named, it is nonetheless recognisably a version of London in the early 90s, as allusions to the underground queer parties of Vauxhall, the rise and fall of squatting movements, and the slow march of gentrification announcing itself south of the river make clear. Porter also weaves queer memory of AIDS into the story more directly: while in New York, Johnny sees one of Felix Gonzalez-Torres's "candy works" (the artist's tribute to his partner Ross Laycock) on display; he later contributes a piece to the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Overall, this is a remarkably poignant novel. Porter says that he came to fiction first and to fashion writing and criticism by force and the need to make a living. With Nova Scotia House, he demonstrates that he is not only a natural storyteller, but one well-endowed with a talent for highlighting those of our queer forebears' goals, aspirations, and methods that assimilationist politics and narratives of progress obfuscate.
The story follows forty-eight year old Johnny Grant as he looks back to his relationship with his partner Jerry Field, who was his senior by 26 years and passed away nearly three decades ago. It was in Jerry's house and garden – 1, Nova Scotia House – that the pair fell in love and faced the devastating virus that eventually took the latter's life, and it is here that Johnny continues to stand vigil to the world they knew and built together. As Johnny's memories jog between the then and now, we are brought into the heart of a moment in which individuals like Jerry reimagined the possibilities of love, sex, friendship, community, and sustenance; a moment whose energy and ethos he – and, in our turn, we readers – must attempt to restore and reinvigorate in the present.
Both a love story and a lament, Nova Scotia House evinces the enduring grief of the AIDS pandemic while also honouring the radical creativity of queer life, the kind that resisted assimilation and capitalist exploitation, and drew strength from its marginality and survival even and especially at the worst of times. Porter's distinctive prose here allows him to translate the emotional, psychological and political valiance of the people and the period he writes upon with grace, and affords grace and reprive to the overwhelming sense of survivor's guilt that envelops the community he speaks to and about.
The affective power of the writing here also owes, in part, to how rooted it is in lived history: Johnny and Jerry's story, for instance, seems to subtly echo the relationship between Keith Collins and Derek Jarman; the 'die-in' they stage along with their friends recalls the work for ACT-UP activists and artists like David Wojnarowicz; and though the setting of the story is never named, it is nonetheless recognisably a version of London in the early 90s, as allusions to the underground queer parties of Vauxhall, the rise and fall of squatting movements, and the slow march of gentrification announcing itself south of the river make clear. Porter also weaves queer memory of AIDS into the story more directly: while in New York, Johnny sees one of Felix Gonzalez-Torres's "candy works" (the artist's tribute to his partner Ross Laycock) on display; he later contributes a piece to the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Overall, this is a remarkably poignant novel. Porter says that he came to fiction first and to fashion writing and criticism by force and the need to make a living. With Nova Scotia House, he demonstrates that he is not only a natural storyteller, but one well-endowed with a talent for highlighting those of our queer forebears' goals, aspirations, and methods that assimilationist politics and narratives of progress obfuscate.
October 31, 2024
It surprised me how many times I cried reading this
April 10, 2026
What a fall from grace for me? I was very into this for the first couple of chapters. The narrative of the novel consists of a rhythmic stream of consciousness style, which I was initially totally vibing with. But as the novel progressed, I became quite disillusioned and disinterested. The stylistic choice started to just feel like empty words. Clunky repetition meant to pad out a thin narrative.
A shame because there’s a heartbreakingly honest story buried somewhere here. It was a change of pace to be able to read a HIV-related UK-based gay story instead of the American-centric version I’m accustomed to reading. But other than that new-to-me perspective or the momentary flashes of emotional brilliance, I didn’t think this novel was doing all that much, or at least providing me with anything newly profound to chew on. It felt like it was trying to force particular emotions on me without having the arsenal to back up that mission.
Even though I spent the entire time in the main character’s head, I couldn’t really tell you anything about him. From a coming of age & sexual awakening standpoint, he’s quite forgettable. Maybe I’m being unfair, but I think the style was too controlled. It felt too stuffy, like the author let his most misguided impulses take over the pen, when he could’ve used some self-editing.
I’m still giving this 3 stars because there were occasional moments that left me floored; sneak-up-on-me moments.. And for that, it proves that the author has the talent/ability to cut through nerves. It’s just unfortunate that I didn’t feel that way at all times, mostly feeling that the style sucked the air out of the room.
But, hey, cheers to all who loved this novel wholeheartedly. There are lots of stans out there, and I ain’t mad at it.
A shame because there’s a heartbreakingly honest story buried somewhere here. It was a change of pace to be able to read a HIV-related UK-based gay story instead of the American-centric version I’m accustomed to reading. But other than that new-to-me perspective or the momentary flashes of emotional brilliance, I didn’t think this novel was doing all that much, or at least providing me with anything newly profound to chew on. It felt like it was trying to force particular emotions on me without having the arsenal to back up that mission.
Even though I spent the entire time in the main character’s head, I couldn’t really tell you anything about him. From a coming of age & sexual awakening standpoint, he’s quite forgettable. Maybe I’m being unfair, but I think the style was too controlled. It felt too stuffy, like the author let his most misguided impulses take over the pen, when he could’ve used some self-editing.
I’m still giving this 3 stars because there were occasional moments that left me floored; sneak-up-on-me moments.. And for that, it proves that the author has the talent/ability to cut through nerves. It’s just unfortunate that I didn’t feel that way at all times, mostly feeling that the style sucked the air out of the room.
But, hey, cheers to all who loved this novel wholeheartedly. There are lots of stans out there, and I ain’t mad at it.
October 10, 2025
3.5, rounded down.
I actually bought this prior to it making it onto the Goldsmith Prize shortlist but am just getting round to it now. The prize is given to a UK/Irish author that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form”, in this case presumably for its elliptical, repetitive and non-punctuated sentences - that I at first rather disliked, then came to appreciate, but again irked me somewhat by the end. I don't think the use of such particularly innovative -- many authors have used such techniques, and he often seemed to be self-consciously aping S. Beckett (with his 'I can't go on I can't go on I'll go on' tropes).
The novel covers basically two different time frames: the majority taking place between 1991-1995 and detailing the love affair between the narrator, then 19-year-old Johnny Grant, and the owner of the titular residence, 45-year-old aspiring painter Jerry Field. At their initial meeting, Jerry reveals his HIV+ status, and most of the book concerns the disintegration of his health and (spoiler alert!) eventual death just a few months prior to the introduction of retroviral drugs.
During those first 15 years of the AIDS pandemic (starting in 1981), there seemed to be a new AIDS memoir or novel coming out monthly and since I read a fair number of them back then, these sections did not QUITE seem entirely novel or fresh to me, except for the fact it is being filtered through the eyes of Johnny circa 2020, looking back at that period with both fondness and regret, rather than the rawness and immediacy of those early works. But I am not sure that is not a detriment, rather than a plus.
The rest of the book covers Johnny's initial period of grief and then carries on through his eventual departure from NSH to fulfill Jerry's dream of living on a farm, where he cares for their aging friend Gareth in a communal arrangement with two lesbians.
One thing I found rather peculiar is that the ending sends Johnny to view the UK version of the Names Project Quilt, honoring those who succumbed to the disease, some of whose panels are included in the penultimate chapter. The US Project had over 45,000 panels ... while the UK one had a mere 384!! Guess it didn't catch on there as it did here.
Final summation is that, although I didn't think it such a novel novel ( :-) ), I am glad that new works covering the AIDS crisis are still being written, so that chapter in our queer history doesn't get swept away - and I'm glad I read this.
I actually bought this prior to it making it onto the Goldsmith Prize shortlist but am just getting round to it now. The prize is given to a UK/Irish author that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form”, in this case presumably for its elliptical, repetitive and non-punctuated sentences - that I at first rather disliked, then came to appreciate, but again irked me somewhat by the end. I don't think the use of such particularly innovative -- many authors have used such techniques, and he often seemed to be self-consciously aping S. Beckett (with his 'I can't go on I can't go on I'll go on' tropes).
The novel covers basically two different time frames: the majority taking place between 1991-1995 and detailing the love affair between the narrator, then 19-year-old Johnny Grant, and the owner of the titular residence, 45-year-old aspiring painter Jerry Field. At their initial meeting, Jerry reveals his HIV+ status, and most of the book concerns the disintegration of his health and (spoiler alert!) eventual death just a few months prior to the introduction of retroviral drugs.
During those first 15 years of the AIDS pandemic (starting in 1981), there seemed to be a new AIDS memoir or novel coming out monthly and since I read a fair number of them back then, these sections did not QUITE seem entirely novel or fresh to me, except for the fact it is being filtered through the eyes of Johnny circa 2020, looking back at that period with both fondness and regret, rather than the rawness and immediacy of those early works. But I am not sure that is not a detriment, rather than a plus.
The rest of the book covers Johnny's initial period of grief and then carries on through his eventual departure from NSH to fulfill Jerry's dream of living on a farm, where he cares for their aging friend Gareth in a communal arrangement with two lesbians.
One thing I found rather peculiar is that the ending sends Johnny to view the UK version of the Names Project Quilt, honoring those who succumbed to the disease, some of whose panels are included in the penultimate chapter. The US Project had over 45,000 panels ... while the UK one had a mere 384!! Guess it didn't catch on there as it did here.
Final summation is that, although I didn't think it such a novel novel ( :-) ), I am glad that new works covering the AIDS crisis are still being written, so that chapter in our queer history doesn't get swept away - and I'm glad I read this.
Read
July 3, 2025No rating because it simply wouldn’t do!
Devastatingly important story to tell but (and this is a matter of personal paste) incredibly difficult to stick with the text due to the writing style.
Devastatingly important story to tell but (and this is a matter of personal paste) incredibly difficult to stick with the text due to the writing style.
March 15, 2025
“This is how you honour Jerry, says Gareth and he is speaking into new air. Can you see? By connecting with queer magic. By resisting normality. By caring. By coming here every week, to spend time with me, by being here.”
Exquisite. A work of art. My heart aches for Jerry, for Johnny, for every single person who has ever lost someone who mattered to them more than anything in the world. Porter’s writing is a true gift. Thank you so much to Rih over at Penguin for the advance review copy!
Exquisite. A work of art. My heart aches for Jerry, for Johnny, for every single person who has ever lost someone who mattered to them more than anything in the world. Porter’s writing is a true gift. Thank you so much to Rih over at Penguin for the advance review copy!
Read
June 26, 2026DNF on page 4.
The writing style managed to give me a headache in just 4 pages. It might be a good book for some but it's not a book for me.
I read a copy of the book gifted by the publisher
The writing style managed to give me a headache in just 4 pages. It might be a good book for some but it's not a book for me.
"Put on Monk. Monk's Dream. Then is now, now is then, don't you see. Our insignificance. I do not know if I make sense but then I do not think we can make sense, there has to be contradiction. What do I know. Wait. I will not hate myself. I will not."
I read a copy of the book gifted by the publisher
Read
August 12, 2026«É uma história muito bonita, mas também muito dura, sobre as consequências (ainda atuais para muitas pessoas) desta epidemia, sobre todo o sofrimento por que muita gente passou, e sobre a importância de lembrar e de falar sobre o que aconteceu. Além disso, fala também bastante sobre a crise da habitação e sobre esta ideia de as casas serem repositórios de memórias, tanto boas como más. Se gostam de narrativas que falem sobre vivências queer, acho que vão gostar bastante deste, apesar de nem sempre ser fácil acompanhar este fluxo de consciência.»
Review completa em: https://ritadanova.substack.com/p/rev....
Review completa em: https://ritadanova.substack.com/p/rev....
October 5, 2025
Shortlisted for the 2025 Goldsmiths Prize
Before the nightmare began, the last thing we wanted was normality. Our lives were dedicated to the pursuit of queer magic ... We have to reconnect with queer magic today or else all is lost.
Nova Scotia House is Charlie Porter's debut novel, although in common with most of the other authors on the Goldsmiths Prize list he has been previously published in another form, in his case art/fashion books.
The novel is narrated from the present day by Johnny Grant, now 48. But much of the novel has him looking back on his relationship with Jerry Field in the early 90s. Jerry was 45 when the two met in 1991, Johnny 19, and was HIV positive when the two met, and died of AIDS in July 1995, months before retroviral drugs started to become available.
You found each other and you saved him.
He saved me.
It was mutual and it was beautiful. Jerry had given up hope before he met you. You gave him life those last few years. He didn't even make 50. It is so cruel. You now carry him within you.
I don't, I don't do him justice I fail him I fail him every day.
Johnny still lives in the council flat in Nova Scotia House, originally Jerry's home, where he carries on the garden that Jerry originally grew, but the light to the garden is under threat from a tower block being built in the area, and indeed Porter has said that a new building being constructed near his East London home was the starting point of the novel: “As it was being built, I could see that it was probably going to overshadow some flats that were already there, so I started to think about who could live in those existing flats.”
And this is a novel both insprired by real places and people - e.g. Porter has said he took permission from Derek Jarman's relationship with Keith Collins; a local pub-nightclub in inspired by the Joiners Arms, and the disco scenes and music by Vauxhall's Horse Meat Disco; an exhibition Johnny visits in the novel's closing pages is based on the work of Félix González-Torres - and at the same time, these aren't the places or characters in the novel, which are fictional and also in some cases not named at all. As Porter says:
“The book is set in a version of London that is very clearly London, but ’London’ is never said and the bars are invented or have different names ... I didn’t want anyone to think, ’Oh, I love Horsemeat Disco’ and bring their own memory of what that is to this story, I wanted to describe the party as if you’re experiencing it then and there.”
This is a novel about sexuality - which is celebrated in all it's messy detail - but also about queer living, Jerry resolutely counter-cultural, as a mutual friend Gareth reminisces in the present day, looking back on the period when Jerry died:
Do you remember that time?, says Gareth. Maybe it didn't strike you because you were so young, you weren't to know. We were all exhausted, all of us who survived, everyone was exhausted. Everyone wanted the nightmare to be over. Everyone wanted to live normal lives. Everyone wanted to forget about everything. It is understandable, you cannot blame anyone for it. But here is the thing, Johnny. Before the nightmare began, the last thing we wanted was normality. Our lives were dedicated to the pursuit of queer magic.
He stretched out the words. Qu-ee-er mmm-ag-ic.
It was queer magic that reached back through time, reached far into the future, it broke time, it broke the physical realm, it broke the constraints of what is considered normal, that awful world of conformity where really you just become a cog in the machine, where you are milked for profit, where your primary role is to consume and therefore be consumed. AIDS put queer magic in total jeopardy. So much magic wiped out. We have to reconnect with queer magic today or else all is lost.
Gareth sips his tea. Gareth bites his biscuit. Gareth sips his tea. I say nothing, Gareth has not finished, his thoughts are still loose and free, this is intelligence, not academia, …
Johnny's narration is distinctive and actually reminded me of the prose of Jon Fosse's Septology in its simplicity but power (Jerry also painting simple but powerful pictures like Fosse's Asle), this the opening paragraphs of the novel:
Let me sort through who I am. Won't take long. Paintings by Jerry. Some books that don't depress me. Furniture is Jerry's, mostly, made by his friends. Two pairs of sneakers, a pair of boots. Two coats - a waterproof and a duffel, back of the door - mine, not his. Jerry's diaries are upstairs, our letters, our paper trail. It is safe.
Stones and stones and stones on shelves. Stones to remember a beach or a time and brought home and they become a stone on the shelf no memory of where it was from or when just stones. I'm so used to the stones I see them and I don't see. Not seeing is more than seeing.
This room is open plan and nothing really and I like that nothing. I come in and there is the kitchen and there is the lounge and there is the door and there is the garden where I grow what I can to eat. It is all the same and one is the other and this is how I like things. I do not want to leave it.
And a particular tick/construct of Johnny's in the continuous self-correcting commentary, perhaps an indication of his underlying sense of dislocation, this as he is coming in to land in the US on his first ever flight, towards the novel's end: There was an announcement about forms, we had to fill in forms, they would bring round forms. No one brought round forms they brought round forms.
And Porter bring the novel to a moving and carthartic end as, leaving Nova Scotia House, Johnny reconnects with the communal counter-cultural spirit that marked the warehouse period of Jerry's life before the two met (inspired in turn by Jarman's)
And in a novel that, as noted, otherwise tends to avoid specifics of time and place, the novel's closing pages also features images from the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, remembering the stories of 384 of the many of those lost in the early days of the HIV AIDS epidemic in the 80’s and 90’s.
A brilliant inclusion on a very strong Goldsmiths list - 4.5 stars.
Resources/extra reading:
A short story adjacent to the novel, narrated by Nova Scotia House itself: https://www.apartamentomagazine.com/s...
Spotify playlist curated by the author of the songs featured: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6X6...?
Interviews with the author:
https://www.anothermag.com/design-liv...
https://www.vogue.com/article/charlie...
https://www.wormsmagazine.com/wormhol...
Before the nightmare began, the last thing we wanted was normality. Our lives were dedicated to the pursuit of queer magic ... We have to reconnect with queer magic today or else all is lost.
Nova Scotia House is Charlie Porter's debut novel, although in common with most of the other authors on the Goldsmiths Prize list he has been previously published in another form, in his case art/fashion books.
The novel is narrated from the present day by Johnny Grant, now 48. But much of the novel has him looking back on his relationship with Jerry Field in the early 90s. Jerry was 45 when the two met in 1991, Johnny 19, and was HIV positive when the two met, and died of AIDS in July 1995, months before retroviral drugs started to become available.
You found each other and you saved him.
He saved me.
It was mutual and it was beautiful. Jerry had given up hope before he met you. You gave him life those last few years. He didn't even make 50. It is so cruel. You now carry him within you.
I don't, I don't do him justice I fail him I fail him every day.
Johnny still lives in the council flat in Nova Scotia House, originally Jerry's home, where he carries on the garden that Jerry originally grew, but the light to the garden is under threat from a tower block being built in the area, and indeed Porter has said that a new building being constructed near his East London home was the starting point of the novel: “As it was being built, I could see that it was probably going to overshadow some flats that were already there, so I started to think about who could live in those existing flats.”
And this is a novel both insprired by real places and people - e.g. Porter has said he took permission from Derek Jarman's relationship with Keith Collins; a local pub-nightclub in inspired by the Joiners Arms, and the disco scenes and music by Vauxhall's Horse Meat Disco; an exhibition Johnny visits in the novel's closing pages is based on the work of Félix González-Torres - and at the same time, these aren't the places or characters in the novel, which are fictional and also in some cases not named at all. As Porter says:
“The book is set in a version of London that is very clearly London, but ’London’ is never said and the bars are invented or have different names ... I didn’t want anyone to think, ’Oh, I love Horsemeat Disco’ and bring their own memory of what that is to this story, I wanted to describe the party as if you’re experiencing it then and there.”
This is a novel about sexuality - which is celebrated in all it's messy detail - but also about queer living, Jerry resolutely counter-cultural, as a mutual friend Gareth reminisces in the present day, looking back on the period when Jerry died:
Do you remember that time?, says Gareth. Maybe it didn't strike you because you were so young, you weren't to know. We were all exhausted, all of us who survived, everyone was exhausted. Everyone wanted the nightmare to be over. Everyone wanted to live normal lives. Everyone wanted to forget about everything. It is understandable, you cannot blame anyone for it. But here is the thing, Johnny. Before the nightmare began, the last thing we wanted was normality. Our lives were dedicated to the pursuit of queer magic.
He stretched out the words. Qu-ee-er mmm-ag-ic.
It was queer magic that reached back through time, reached far into the future, it broke time, it broke the physical realm, it broke the constraints of what is considered normal, that awful world of conformity where really you just become a cog in the machine, where you are milked for profit, where your primary role is to consume and therefore be consumed. AIDS put queer magic in total jeopardy. So much magic wiped out. We have to reconnect with queer magic today or else all is lost.
Gareth sips his tea. Gareth bites his biscuit. Gareth sips his tea. I say nothing, Gareth has not finished, his thoughts are still loose and free, this is intelligence, not academia, …
Johnny's narration is distinctive and actually reminded me of the prose of Jon Fosse's Septology in its simplicity but power (Jerry also painting simple but powerful pictures like Fosse's Asle), this the opening paragraphs of the novel:
Let me sort through who I am. Won't take long. Paintings by Jerry. Some books that don't depress me. Furniture is Jerry's, mostly, made by his friends. Two pairs of sneakers, a pair of boots. Two coats - a waterproof and a duffel, back of the door - mine, not his. Jerry's diaries are upstairs, our letters, our paper trail. It is safe.
Stones and stones and stones on shelves. Stones to remember a beach or a time and brought home and they become a stone on the shelf no memory of where it was from or when just stones. I'm so used to the stones I see them and I don't see. Not seeing is more than seeing.
This room is open plan and nothing really and I like that nothing. I come in and there is the kitchen and there is the lounge and there is the door and there is the garden where I grow what I can to eat. It is all the same and one is the other and this is how I like things. I do not want to leave it.
And a particular tick/construct of Johnny's in the continuous self-correcting commentary, perhaps an indication of his underlying sense of dislocation, this as he is coming in to land in the US on his first ever flight, towards the novel's end: There was an announcement about forms, we had to fill in forms, they would bring round forms. No one brought round forms they brought round forms.
And Porter bring the novel to a moving and carthartic end as, leaving Nova Scotia House, Johnny reconnects with the communal counter-cultural spirit that marked the warehouse period of Jerry's life before the two met (inspired in turn by Jarman's)
And in a novel that, as noted, otherwise tends to avoid specifics of time and place, the novel's closing pages also features images from the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, remembering the stories of 384 of the many of those lost in the early days of the HIV AIDS epidemic in the 80’s and 90’s.
A brilliant inclusion on a very strong Goldsmiths list - 4.5 stars.
Resources/extra reading:
A short story adjacent to the novel, narrated by Nova Scotia House itself: https://www.apartamentomagazine.com/s...
Spotify playlist curated by the author of the songs featured: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6X6...?
Interviews with the author:
https://www.anothermag.com/design-liv...
https://www.vogue.com/article/charlie...
https://www.wormsmagazine.com/wormhol...
April 26, 2026
4,5 ⭐️
Beautifully queer, this was very touching and made me cry multiple times. I get why people struggle with the stream of consciousness narration, but once you get used to it, it perfectly depicts the character’s inner life and makes it feel even more real. It was very atmospheric and vivid in my mind. The ending was perfect and added some hope to a generally pretty bleak and heart-wrenching story. My only problem is that I wish female characters, and especially lesbians, had played a bigger role in this book, because they played such a big one in the aids crisis. I wish we had seen more of Fiona earlier!
"It wasn’t queerness in opposition to straight people. It wasn’t about trying to find a place within straight society at all. It was queerness for and of itself, and it was fertile, creative, it was bounteous. Really it was glorious."
Beautifully queer, this was very touching and made me cry multiple times. I get why people struggle with the stream of consciousness narration, but once you get used to it, it perfectly depicts the character’s inner life and makes it feel even more real. It was very atmospheric and vivid in my mind. The ending was perfect and added some hope to a generally pretty bleak and heart-wrenching story. My only problem is that I wish female characters, and especially lesbians, had played a bigger role in this book, because they played such a big one in the aids crisis. I wish we had seen more of Fiona earlier!
"It wasn’t queerness in opposition to straight people. It wasn’t about trying to find a place within straight society at all. It was queerness for and of itself, and it was fertile, creative, it was bounteous. Really it was glorious."
August 12, 2025
Well I'm abandoning this one before I waste any more hours of my life on this mess!
What a collection of puerile bullshit. I had such high hopes for this story as well. The writing is pathetic, like the author got a pre-teen to write it for him! Stream of consciousness equates to lazy, half-arsed, pointless writing. Even the characters were annoying and felt like caricatures.
Hugely disappointing, immature waste of time.
What a collection of puerile bullshit. I had such high hopes for this story as well. The writing is pathetic, like the author got a pre-teen to write it for him! Stream of consciousness equates to lazy, half-arsed, pointless writing. Even the characters were annoying and felt like caricatures.
Hugely disappointing, immature waste of time.
November 24, 2025
[I have just completed my review of this excerable novel (June 2026) and I apologise for the delay.]
I can't say I did not finish this novel because abandonment is more accurate. I barely made 50 pages before I gave up because the prose was like tooth extraction but more than anything else I abandoned this novel because I could not shake the idea that it was fraudulent - that the author had adopted themes like HIV/AIDS because he was utterly unconnected with a current reality. I have sensed this with other graduates of writing programmes who clearly need a 'theme' for their magnum opus and found it in the past. I don't need second hand AIDS tales - it is rather like writing a holocaust novel shortly after Primo Levi or Imre Kertesz had produced 'If This is a Man' or 'Fatelessness' - it could be called de trope but it is more then that.
AIDS does not only belong to my generation (I am 69 so have lived through before, during and post AIDS) but simply choosing it as a subject does not grant you immunity from criticism nor the right to rewrite the UK's gay history so as to put your own pet campaign project (the UK's imitative quilt project) into a central position.
What this novel lacks and what drove me to abandon it was its lack of honesty - something that is hard to explain but whose absence condemns a novel to the frigid wastes of literature's central hell. AIDS was horrendous - but in the UK the worst of the prejudice and ignorance held centre for a far shorter time than it did in the USA or elsewhere. Also HIV/AIDS was never a 'gay' plague or disease - from the beginning it was recognised that it attacked Haitians, Heroin addicts and Homosexual males but only one group was capable of being presented as white and middle class and worthy of saving. AIDS has claimed more women and babies - but they are almost always dark skinned and poor - thus not the demographic the graduate of university creative writing degrees will have met or socialised with.
There are a mountain of excellent, as well as not so excellent, memoirs and fictionalised accounts of the HIV/AIDS years - living in the UK I would recommend Oscar Moore's 'A Matter of Life and Sex' and 'PWA: Looking AIDS in the Face' (PWA stands for Person With AIDS) - Oscar Moore died at 36, blind, but he had opened more eyes to the reality of AIDS and for his books to languish in obscurity while mendacious self serving crap like this is allowed to claim emotional relevance rather then be branded the career building schlock is makes me want to weep.
I can't say I did not finish this novel because abandonment is more accurate. I barely made 50 pages before I gave up because the prose was like tooth extraction but more than anything else I abandoned this novel because I could not shake the idea that it was fraudulent - that the author had adopted themes like HIV/AIDS because he was utterly unconnected with a current reality. I have sensed this with other graduates of writing programmes who clearly need a 'theme' for their magnum opus and found it in the past. I don't need second hand AIDS tales - it is rather like writing a holocaust novel shortly after Primo Levi or Imre Kertesz had produced 'If This is a Man' or 'Fatelessness' - it could be called de trope but it is more then that.
AIDS does not only belong to my generation (I am 69 so have lived through before, during and post AIDS) but simply choosing it as a subject does not grant you immunity from criticism nor the right to rewrite the UK's gay history so as to put your own pet campaign project (the UK's imitative quilt project) into a central position.
What this novel lacks and what drove me to abandon it was its lack of honesty - something that is hard to explain but whose absence condemns a novel to the frigid wastes of literature's central hell. AIDS was horrendous - but in the UK the worst of the prejudice and ignorance held centre for a far shorter time than it did in the USA or elsewhere. Also HIV/AIDS was never a 'gay' plague or disease - from the beginning it was recognised that it attacked Haitians, Heroin addicts and Homosexual males but only one group was capable of being presented as white and middle class and worthy of saving. AIDS has claimed more women and babies - but they are almost always dark skinned and poor - thus not the demographic the graduate of university creative writing degrees will have met or socialised with.
There are a mountain of excellent, as well as not so excellent, memoirs and fictionalised accounts of the HIV/AIDS years - living in the UK I would recommend Oscar Moore's 'A Matter of Life and Sex' and 'PWA: Looking AIDS in the Face' (PWA stands for Person With AIDS) - Oscar Moore died at 36, blind, but he had opened more eyes to the reality of AIDS and for his books to languish in obscurity while mendacious self serving crap like this is allowed to claim emotional relevance rather then be branded the career building schlock is makes me want to weep.
March 5, 2025
This is a beautiful book on love, loss, and grief. It takes place in a creative community devastated by the AIDS epidemic. At first I didn’t understand the writing style, the fragmentation, the coherent incoherence. I soon realised what seemed like disparate strands were not, but instead were Johnny’s stream of consciousness. From there on I devoured every word.
Johnny is 19 when he meets Jerry, an older man who is HIV positive. Their life together, their love, is beautiful, glorious, and heartbreaking. How Jerry brings a new awareness and a new way of life to Johnny is breathtaking. I cried. Nova Scotia House is a book which has lingered with me. More than anything when I finished reading it I wanted to pick up another book, one written by Jerry, to hear and feel and experience his wisdom further. Charlie Porter has created a masterpiece of words and of our culture.
My thanks to Penguin Press, NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Johnny is 19 when he meets Jerry, an older man who is HIV positive. Their life together, their love, is beautiful, glorious, and heartbreaking. How Jerry brings a new awareness and a new way of life to Johnny is breathtaking. I cried. Nova Scotia House is a book which has lingered with me. More than anything when I finished reading it I wanted to pick up another book, one written by Jerry, to hear and feel and experience his wisdom further. Charlie Porter has created a masterpiece of words and of our culture.
My thanks to Penguin Press, NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.
June 23, 2026
i’m exhausted, i’m confused, i’m being haunted by this book. 2 star, 3 star, 4 star; no reason good no reason bad. jerry this jerry that. fuck everything. i don’t know what to think.
goodbye nova scotia. you were never mine.
goodbye nova scotia. you were never mine.
May 11, 2025
Any sincerity went out the window with the gross out seven page sex scene. I think Brett Easton Ellis did the same but that was satire. So… we are supposed to relate to him because his older Partner dying is of aids? Except… the literal Next page he’s wiping c*m out of his anus onto a random hookups couch. Then he’s getting FF after I’m supposed to empathise with his emotional struggle? I feel a little bad that I didn’t feel anything for any of the characters but more than that I felt like he was manipulating me into false emotion with indulgent drawn out death scenes with Jerry. There are a few wonderful moments, but the stream of consciousness rambling style never won me over. Sorry, pass. 2/5
April 3, 2026
This was…odd.
While the writing style was strange at first, after a couple of chapters in, I got used to the prose. However, the story fell flat for me. The main relationship in the book had little to no build, no real feelings; just words and repetitive phrases to invoke something clearly not there.
I admired the AIDS awareness the book introduced but I couldn’t really connect with the characters in this or really sink myself into the their viewpoint. Also, the 20+yrs. age gap was a no for me; especially when the main character continued to reference himself as a “kid”. Cringe.
1.5 rounded up.
While the writing style was strange at first, after a couple of chapters in, I got used to the prose. However, the story fell flat for me. The main relationship in the book had little to no build, no real feelings; just words and repetitive phrases to invoke something clearly not there.
I admired the AIDS awareness the book introduced but I couldn’t really connect with the characters in this or really sink myself into the their viewpoint. Also, the 20+yrs. age gap was a no for me; especially when the main character continued to reference himself as a “kid”. Cringe.
1.5 rounded up.
July 2, 2026
Like the cynic I so often am I had chosen to disbelieve the hype around this book, the cover of which is so viciously orange (in the UK) or forcefully blue (in the US), and the prose of which I’ve heard described as “experimental” (which nine out of ten times means it’s poorly written, conceding that the other tenth of the time an author has done something truly interesting).
But here I am, awarding a tearful five stars, nursing the wounded spot in my chest that was simultaneously pierced with the despair of this story and healed by its elegant artistry.
I don’t know how else to describe what Porter did here than to say he’s found a way to distill grief into a tangible, material thing. The sheer weight of it rendered me unable to read too much in a single sitting, even though this is a very readable book. It’s the insistence of it, the inexorability. The experience of all-encompassing sorrow, and how it works retroactively and colors your memories at the same time as it stretches into the future, is one that Porter not only knows but has truly evoked with his writing.
(It’s this kind of masterful writing about sadness that strengthens my resolve against the exploitative, obsessive trauma porn of so many popular “gay novels,” with Yanagihara’s A Little Life as leader of the pack.)
In terms of his prose, I think “experimental” was an overstatement, but Porter really is doing something unusual with his sentences, which are probably the key force behind the “pressing in from all sides” effect: they are repetitive and fairly short and somehow implacable; their rhythm is less melody and more steady beating drum. There are interesting uses of punctuation here and there, and memories especially are described in a stylized, repetitive way. But the prose is not in any way unapproachable and it’s also not simple.
Best of all, and probably most impressively, without cheapening any of the sadness here and with absolutely zero toxic positivity, Porter does create a sense of hope and meaning. It’s that sense that had me in tears by the end, and made this a beautiful and necessary novel, for me.
If you are going to read one AIDS novel, dare I very brashly say that maybe it should be this one? And really, gay millennials like myself should be reading AIDS novels. There is so much important history there, so much trauma, and so many to be truly grateful for.
But here I am, awarding a tearful five stars, nursing the wounded spot in my chest that was simultaneously pierced with the despair of this story and healed by its elegant artistry.
I don’t know how else to describe what Porter did here than to say he’s found a way to distill grief into a tangible, material thing. The sheer weight of it rendered me unable to read too much in a single sitting, even though this is a very readable book. It’s the insistence of it, the inexorability. The experience of all-encompassing sorrow, and how it works retroactively and colors your memories at the same time as it stretches into the future, is one that Porter not only knows but has truly evoked with his writing.
(It’s this kind of masterful writing about sadness that strengthens my resolve against the exploitative, obsessive trauma porn of so many popular “gay novels,” with Yanagihara’s A Little Life as leader of the pack.)
In terms of his prose, I think “experimental” was an overstatement, but Porter really is doing something unusual with his sentences, which are probably the key force behind the “pressing in from all sides” effect: they are repetitive and fairly short and somehow implacable; their rhythm is less melody and more steady beating drum. There are interesting uses of punctuation here and there, and memories especially are described in a stylized, repetitive way. But the prose is not in any way unapproachable and it’s also not simple.
Best of all, and probably most impressively, without cheapening any of the sadness here and with absolutely zero toxic positivity, Porter does create a sense of hope and meaning. It’s that sense that had me in tears by the end, and made this a beautiful and necessary novel, for me.
If you are going to read one AIDS novel, dare I very brashly say that maybe it should be this one? And really, gay millennials like myself should be reading AIDS novels. There is so much important history there, so much trauma, and so many to be truly grateful for.
May 27, 2026
I found Nova Scotia House devastating but also unexpectedly tender and hopeful — a book haunted by absence but still full of longing and survival. Charlie Porter writes about queer history not as something fixed in the past, but as something still alive in friendships, grief, sex, art, and language itself. One passage that felt especially impactful to me was:
“It was queer magic that reached back through time, reached far into the future, it broke time, it broke the physical realm, it broke the constraints of what is considered normal, that awful world of conformity where really you just become a cog in the machine, where you are milked for profit, where your primary role is to consume and therefore be consumed. AIDS put queer magic in total jeopardy. So much magic wiped out. We have to reconnect with queer magic today or else all is lost.”
That idea of “queer magic” felt central to the book for me — queerness not just as identity, but as a way of resisting conformity and all the systems that reduce people to something useful or consumable. The novel mourns what was lost during the AIDS crisis, but it’s also about what survives: memory, friendship, storytelling, desire.
The prose has a staccato rhythm that took me a little while to settle into, and for the first 30–40 pages I wasn’t entirely sure it was working for me. But once I adjusted to the cadence, the emotional force of the book really opened up. There were also one or two moments that genuinely made me tear up. By the end, I found it deeply moving.
I also listened to part of the audiobook, which is narrated by Porter himself, and I’d really recommend experiencing at least some of it that way. Hearing him read the text made it easier for me to get into the musicality of the prose, making the language feel even more alive. His narration suited the book perfectly. A well-earned 5 stars.
“It was queer magic that reached back through time, reached far into the future, it broke time, it broke the physical realm, it broke the constraints of what is considered normal, that awful world of conformity where really you just become a cog in the machine, where you are milked for profit, where your primary role is to consume and therefore be consumed. AIDS put queer magic in total jeopardy. So much magic wiped out. We have to reconnect with queer magic today or else all is lost.”
That idea of “queer magic” felt central to the book for me — queerness not just as identity, but as a way of resisting conformity and all the systems that reduce people to something useful or consumable. The novel mourns what was lost during the AIDS crisis, but it’s also about what survives: memory, friendship, storytelling, desire.
The prose has a staccato rhythm that took me a little while to settle into, and for the first 30–40 pages I wasn’t entirely sure it was working for me. But once I adjusted to the cadence, the emotional force of the book really opened up. There were also one or two moments that genuinely made me tear up. By the end, I found it deeply moving.
I also listened to part of the audiobook, which is narrated by Porter himself, and I’d really recommend experiencing at least some of it that way. Hearing him read the text made it easier for me to get into the musicality of the prose, making the language feel even more alive. His narration suited the book perfectly. A well-earned 5 stars.
January 27, 2025
I spent my life doing everything I could to fight normality and where do we find ourselves. Normality. What a vic-tor-y. Dear, did you get any biscuits, I would love a biscuit.
There are biscuits, I got us biscuits.
Because of course normal men are all awful. To become one of them, to become normal, us queers need to be awful every moment of every day. (p. 55)
It's only January but I may have stumbled upon my favorite queer novel of 2025. It's hard nowadays to write fiction about the AIDS epidemic, considering that we're at remove of several of generations, ever intense neoliberal society of spectacle, and not least the newfound freedoms that have come with PrEP and other effective means of prevention available mostly in the global North and West. And therein lies the possibility of a contemporary politicisation of AIDS. Porter asks what we have forgotten, or rather what we have been forced to forget by trauma, by cisheterofascism, by spectacle. "To forget would be to assimilate," writes Porter (p. 209). Porter shows forms of living alongside the consumer cisheteronorm that were just beginning to emerge when the epidemic struck, and along with the personal loss of the main character, Johnny, we are also made to experience the loss of what might have been if these experiments had not only survived but thrived. An incredible novel of emotional and intellectual depth that came out of nowhere, and I'm sitting here completely blown away.
There are biscuits, I got us biscuits.
Because of course normal men are all awful. To become one of them, to become normal, us queers need to be awful every moment of every day. (p. 55)
It's only January but I may have stumbled upon my favorite queer novel of 2025. It's hard nowadays to write fiction about the AIDS epidemic, considering that we're at remove of several of generations, ever intense neoliberal society of spectacle, and not least the newfound freedoms that have come with PrEP and other effective means of prevention available mostly in the global North and West. And therein lies the possibility of a contemporary politicisation of AIDS. Porter asks what we have forgotten, or rather what we have been forced to forget by trauma, by cisheterofascism, by spectacle. "To forget would be to assimilate," writes Porter (p. 209). Porter shows forms of living alongside the consumer cisheteronorm that were just beginning to emerge when the epidemic struck, and along with the personal loss of the main character, Johnny, we are also made to experience the loss of what might have been if these experiments had not only survived but thrived. An incredible novel of emotional and intellectual depth that came out of nowhere, and I'm sitting here completely blown away.
May 9, 2025
Retrospectively narrated by Johnny who, arriving in London at 19 falls in love with Jerry—45 and HIV positive at a time when untreatable, his fate inescapable. The novel considers themes of queer, working class community and communality, queer spatiality, queer age gap relationships, queer resistance (and how this was quelled by the AIDS), and the queer inheritance of the ‘post’-pandemic generation. Not to mention, queer self-sufficiency and subsistence, like a gay ‘The Good Life’, albeit, without the humour—this came across a bit self-serious and self-absorbed with its quasi-radicalism for me. Central to these explorations is the notion of non-acquiescence and non-assimilation. While important, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’ve read this type of narrative, heard these sorts of ideas, before. What’s more, I found it difficult to get along with the staccato, stream-of-consciousness style with its repetitive syntax. There’s some moving moments and diverting snapshots of gay London life in the 90s, but it wasn’t to hold me overall.
May 17, 2025
Despite some touching moments, I found this very unoriginal and heavy-handed in its thematic exploration. I also hated the narrative voice and writing style, which brough me close to DNFing pretty early on in the book. 5/10
May 28, 2025
Queer Magic will never die. This story was deeply touching once I got into it. I struggled with the writig style but listening to it as an audiobook really helped with that. Could have done with less sex scenes and descriptions of sperm…
January 7, 2025
god this was fucking beautiful and devastating
February 21, 2026
i found it so hard to get into this book, the style felt so tired, i feel like we will look back at this stream of consciousness moment in the 2020s and be like why did we tolerate this so much….as the book went on i started to love it so much and felt like the style was much better suited when following johnnys life working at the albion, exploring sex and queerness in the nineties, i was listening to all of the old house tracks they mentioned while reading about him in the club and i feel like that helped me get into the rhythm of the prose a lot more. i also thought the pieces about community organizing were really compelling, but the problem is this was like the smallest portion of the book. most of the book was the narrator johnny being sad and uninteresting
February 1, 2026
a rather harrowing depiction of before, during and after the AIDS crisis from the perspective of a man who is reflecting on the loss of his lover. Really different to any other piece of queer fiction I’ve read, it’s in a stream of consciousness style which took me a while to get used to. It leaves a lingering question of what do we do with the anger related to this crisis, and how do we continue to bare it because of course we still do
June 19, 2025
A stunning and necessary reminder (to myself) of why I read fiction. This book has shaken me to my core as a reader and a writer; it is as impressively crafted as it is unique. Yet its story, so familiar. Touching. Radical.
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