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Nova Scotia House
‘A work of genius’ Philip Hoare
‘One of the best things I’ve read in many many years’ Hilton Als
'Beautifully provocative ... the most compelling exploration of life, death, love and resistance that I've read for a very long time' Eimear McBride
A story of loss and grief, sex and love, and refusing to relinquish dreams
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 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.
‘One of the best things I’ve read in many many years’ Hilton Als
'Beautifully provocative ... the most compelling exploration of life, death, love and resistance that I've read for a very long time' Eimear McBride
A story of loss and grief, sex and love, and refusing to relinquish dreams
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 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.
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 20, 2025
131 people are currently reading
6806 people want to read
About the author
Charlie Porter
14 books47 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 215 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.
January 5, 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.
March 23, 2025
This is a beautifully written, unflinching examination of love, loss and coming home.
This novel is written in a stream of consciousness style, which I don't normally get on with, but the poetic prose is vivid and powerful and I was immediately drawn in and swept away by it's raw beauty.
This is an incredibly moving story about grief and what it means to be loved. It's honest approach is refreshing and touching. The descriptions of place and architecture mirror the protagonist's interior life beautifully as he experiences the desolation of grief and loneliness towards healing and becoming seen again.
This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.
This novel is written in a stream of consciousness style, which I don't normally get on with, but the poetic prose is vivid and powerful and I was immediately drawn in and swept away by it's raw beauty.
This is an incredibly moving story about grief and what it means to be loved. It's honest approach is refreshing and touching. The descriptions of place and architecture mirror the protagonist's interior life beautifully as he experiences the desolation of grief and loneliness towards healing and becoming seen again.
This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.
November 15, 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.
March 16, 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!
October 12, 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...
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.
March 11, 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.
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…
May 18, 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.
October 31, 2024
It surprised me how many times I cried reading this
January 7, 2025
god this was fucking beautiful and devastating
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 28, 2025
One of the best books I have ever read ...
There are books that you read, enjoy, put on a shelf and never think of again. There are books that you pick up, dislike and forget. And there are books that stay with you forever, the lives of the characters leaving a deep impact on you. For me, this is how I was left after reading Nova Scotia House.
What a raw, impactful story Charlie Porter has woven, difficult to read at times when the story has so much suffering and grief.
At the age of 19, Johnny meets Jerry, an artist, somewhat stuck in his ways and routines, in his mid 40s, HIV+ and living in a council house in London. The story is set in the 1980s and in the present time, the writing going back and forth as Johnny, now in his late 40s recalls his life with his now deceased partner.
It documents life in Thatcher's Britain as a gay man, the progression of Jerry's illness, the impact of the AIDS cris and his eventual death. The story doesn't stop there but it carries on as Johnny navigates his life as a widower, finding love again, or gratification, continuing to tend the little garden they shared and eventually breaking free of Nova Scotia House, the block they lived in and the story's namesake.
As I read this book, I really wanted to ask Charlie Porter what inspired the characters and the story.
Because I immediately linked many similarities to Derek Jarman and his relationship with Keith Collins. Even Jarman's death date was within a year of Jerry's, the fact that they were both artists, similar ages, both tended gardens, both started relationships with 19 year old men, both succumbed to AIDS, even down to Johnny meeting a fisherman on a trawler in the story- the real life Keith Collins also becoming a fisherman in Dungeness for many years after Jarman's death.
Jarman lived for many years in London at his home in Phoenix House, eventually having an epiphany and moving to a remote Dungeness to tend to his garden - Jerry and Johnny living for many years in their home of Nova Scotia House in London and Johnny eventually having his own epiphany and moving to a remote coastal hamlet to tend to his own garden.
Even Jerry's desire for all of his artwork to be destroyed before his death- something that Jarman had also said, he wished it would all disappear with him after he died.
Perhaps I was looking for connections and it was coincidence but I wonder if this was the inspiration behind Nova Scotia House in some way.
Either way, this book was incredible. I was sent a copy, thank you, to NetGalley and I hadn't researched it at all, I just opened it one evening and started reading. The format of the writing was very unusual but I realised they were Johnny's thoughts, snippets of sentences and memories as they entered his mind.
Before I knew it, it was 2am. I was completely absorbed in their story. Yes, it is about the AIDS crisis, about hardship and suffering but the story of their life together was beautiful. The routines of their days, the favourite mugs they used, the art that Jerry created. Details like the handmade furniture in their home and how the light in their garden would filter through at different times of the day. It was beautifully written. I finished the book a few days ago and I am still thinking about the characters.
An absolute masterpiece. Well done Charlie Porter!
There are books that you read, enjoy, put on a shelf and never think of again. There are books that you pick up, dislike and forget. And there are books that stay with you forever, the lives of the characters leaving a deep impact on you. For me, this is how I was left after reading Nova Scotia House.
What a raw, impactful story Charlie Porter has woven, difficult to read at times when the story has so much suffering and grief.
At the age of 19, Johnny meets Jerry, an artist, somewhat stuck in his ways and routines, in his mid 40s, HIV+ and living in a council house in London. The story is set in the 1980s and in the present time, the writing going back and forth as Johnny, now in his late 40s recalls his life with his now deceased partner.
It documents life in Thatcher's Britain as a gay man, the progression of Jerry's illness, the impact of the AIDS cris and his eventual death. The story doesn't stop there but it carries on as Johnny navigates his life as a widower, finding love again, or gratification, continuing to tend the little garden they shared and eventually breaking free of Nova Scotia House, the block they lived in and the story's namesake.
As I read this book, I really wanted to ask Charlie Porter what inspired the characters and the story.
Because I immediately linked many similarities to Derek Jarman and his relationship with Keith Collins. Even Jarman's death date was within a year of Jerry's, the fact that they were both artists, similar ages, both tended gardens, both started relationships with 19 year old men, both succumbed to AIDS, even down to Johnny meeting a fisherman on a trawler in the story- the real life Keith Collins also becoming a fisherman in Dungeness for many years after Jarman's death.
Jarman lived for many years in London at his home in Phoenix House, eventually having an epiphany and moving to a remote Dungeness to tend to his garden - Jerry and Johnny living for many years in their home of Nova Scotia House in London and Johnny eventually having his own epiphany and moving to a remote coastal hamlet to tend to his own garden.
Even Jerry's desire for all of his artwork to be destroyed before his death- something that Jarman had also said, he wished it would all disappear with him after he died.
Perhaps I was looking for connections and it was coincidence but I wonder if this was the inspiration behind Nova Scotia House in some way.
Either way, this book was incredible. I was sent a copy, thank you, to NetGalley and I hadn't researched it at all, I just opened it one evening and started reading. The format of the writing was very unusual but I realised they were Johnny's thoughts, snippets of sentences and memories as they entered his mind.
Before I knew it, it was 2am. I was completely absorbed in their story. Yes, it is about the AIDS crisis, about hardship and suffering but the story of their life together was beautiful. The routines of their days, the favourite mugs they used, the art that Jerry created. Details like the handmade furniture in their home and how the light in their garden would filter through at different times of the day. It was beautifully written. I finished the book a few days ago and I am still thinking about the characters.
An absolute masterpiece. Well done Charlie Porter!
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
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.
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 16, 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
March 19, 2025
⭐️Johnny
•Johnny is the main character who is still alive after Jerry's death. He lives in Nova Scotia House alone, reminiscing about their past.
•He reflects back on his relationship with Jerry, how they met, fell in love, and built a life together despite the big age difference (Johnny is 19 years old, Jerry is 45 years old).
•In his mind, Johnny experiences a shift between the past and the present—he tries to understand the meaning of their life and love, and how the world has changed since Jerry is gone.
•He struggles to face the loss, but also begins to realize that he has a responsibility to take care of the legacy of the queer community that is almost lost due to the AIDS crisis.
⭐️Jerry (From Johnny's Memory)
•Jerry is an older, experienced man, who once lived a life of freedom, exploring relationships, philosophies, and the queer community before their world changed.
•From Johnny's point of view, Jerry is a loving figure, but also has the trauma and emotional burden of losing his friends due to the AIDS epidemic.
•Jerry may feel responsible to protect Johnny, but is also aware of his limitations. It gives Johnny the freedom to leave, but Johnny chooses to stay with him.
•In Johnny's memory, Jerry is a symbol of a world that is slowly disappearing—an era that was freer but also more vulnerable to destruction by disease and social stigma.
Although the novel is written from Johnny's perspective, his memories of Jerry provide an insight into how Jerry sees the world and loves Johnny in his limited circumstances.
•Johnny is the main character who is still alive after Jerry's death. He lives in Nova Scotia House alone, reminiscing about their past.
•He reflects back on his relationship with Jerry, how they met, fell in love, and built a life together despite the big age difference (Johnny is 19 years old, Jerry is 45 years old).
•In his mind, Johnny experiences a shift between the past and the present—he tries to understand the meaning of their life and love, and how the world has changed since Jerry is gone.
•He struggles to face the loss, but also begins to realize that he has a responsibility to take care of the legacy of the queer community that is almost lost due to the AIDS crisis.
⭐️Jerry (From Johnny's Memory)
•Jerry is an older, experienced man, who once lived a life of freedom, exploring relationships, philosophies, and the queer community before their world changed.
•From Johnny's point of view, Jerry is a loving figure, but also has the trauma and emotional burden of losing his friends due to the AIDS epidemic.
•Jerry may feel responsible to protect Johnny, but is also aware of his limitations. It gives Johnny the freedom to leave, but Johnny chooses to stay with him.
•In Johnny's memory, Jerry is a symbol of a world that is slowly disappearing—an era that was freer but also more vulnerable to destruction by disease and social stigma.
Although the novel is written from Johnny's perspective, his memories of Jerry provide an insight into how Jerry sees the world and loves Johnny in his limited circumstances.
November 14, 2025
A beautiful and tragic story (I’ve learnt to expect as much from queer fiction lol). This novel touches on so many important themes and subjects: HIV/AIDS in the 80s and 90s, gentrification and displacement as well as more conceptual themes of belonging and what it means to be queer in the peak of change in Britain.
The lack of punctuation (quotation, question, and exclamation marks etc.) is usually something that I really dislike but for this book it really worked. It felt more like a life story being recounted to you directly in such a natural way.
Other than the fact that I felt things started a bit slow, by the end I couldn’t put it down⭐️
The lack of punctuation (quotation, question, and exclamation marks etc.) is usually something that I really dislike but for this book it really worked. It felt more like a life story being recounted to you directly in such a natural way.
Other than the fact that I felt things started a bit slow, by the end I couldn’t put it down⭐️
September 1, 2025
The prose here is so open-hearted and rhythmic that it’s a miracle this doesn’t read as saccharine for the most part. Ridiculously tender in the way it details love, devotion, memory. I was mostly swept up by it (though as a lament against gentrification it’s a little overwrought).
March 10, 2025
First of all, thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press for providing me with the eARC of this book!
“Others want us to seek comfort in forgetting. To seek solace in forgetting. To forget would be to assimilate. We live with our wounds they never close.” – P. 209.
Nova Scotia House reads like one long stream of consciousness – emotional, convoluted, panicked, resilient. While some will certainly be put off by the style of narration, it lends itself perfectly to the story being told. Johnny is stuck but also isn’t, wants to hold on to the past but also doesn’t want to get trapped, wants to move forward but doesn’t want to forget.
Nova Scotia House is a poignant story of love, community, loss and grief, injustice and perseverance. It’s a vivid display of the lives and losses of an entire generation of queer men and more than once it had me tear up and cry for the lives we’ve lost due to negligence and prejudice.
This story is also a clear rejection of assimilation, of bowing to normality and in that it brings hope, highlights the importance of building community. In our modern individualist age, it’s a stark reminder of what can be possible if you come together with your fellow human beings.
An incredible read I would recommend to everybody.
“Others want us to seek comfort in forgetting. To seek solace in forgetting. To forget would be to assimilate. We live with our wounds they never close.” – P. 209.
Nova Scotia House reads like one long stream of consciousness – emotional, convoluted, panicked, resilient. While some will certainly be put off by the style of narration, it lends itself perfectly to the story being told. Johnny is stuck but also isn’t, wants to hold on to the past but also doesn’t want to get trapped, wants to move forward but doesn’t want to forget.
Nova Scotia House is a poignant story of love, community, loss and grief, injustice and perseverance. It’s a vivid display of the lives and losses of an entire generation of queer men and more than once it had me tear up and cry for the lives we’ve lost due to negligence and prejudice.
This story is also a clear rejection of assimilation, of bowing to normality and in that it brings hope, highlights the importance of building community. In our modern individualist age, it’s a stark reminder of what can be possible if you come together with your fellow human beings.
An incredible read I would recommend to everybody.
April 6, 2025
I think everyone should read this.
Original and incredibly touching. The stream of conscious narrative avoids falling into pretentiousness, and instead gets you into the character’s frame of mind from the outset.
A book that while not quotable, feels firmly imprinted on my memory.
Original and incredibly touching. The stream of conscious narrative avoids falling into pretentiousness, and instead gets you into the character’s frame of mind from the outset.
A book that while not quotable, feels firmly imprinted on my memory.
May 19, 2025
I’ve always been fascinated by the advent of the AIDS crisis, particularly in the stories of how the affected and their loved ones created community, for both purposes of finding solace and forming resistance. It’s sobering to remember how short a time ago it was that we lost a generation of gay men, largely to the indifference of the government and the general public. There’s an enduring grief for those that we lost, felt very prominently in books like this. “Nova Scotia House” is Johnny’s story as he looks back on his relationship with Jerry, who was twenty-six years his senior and who died of AIDS three decades prior to the story’s beginning. Johnny relives how he met Jerry, what their life together was like, and how Jerry died. It’s a moving story, and a heartfelt one. The language is beautiful and the relationships within are rendered with tenderness and care. “Nova Scotia House” is a testament to the resilience demonstrated by those whose fates were altered by the AIDS crisis, as well as a poignant and quiet story about love, loss, and going home.
July 22, 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
November 23, 2025
This stream of consciousness writing style through me but I did eventually make my peace with it.
Despite the prose confusing me and even irritating me at times, I still felt emotionally connected to Johnny. His grief is so constant and thick.
Porter was able to capture something honest and fragile. How a home can become a shrine and how memories can trap and comfort you at the same time.
It’s important for authors to keep talking and writing about the AIDS crisis because the story isn’t finished and because so much of it was never told to begin with. I will always celebrate those who continue to ensure our queer brothers and sisters stories aren’t forgotten or softened.
Despite the prose confusing me and even irritating me at times, I still felt emotionally connected to Johnny. His grief is so constant and thick.
Porter was able to capture something honest and fragile. How a home can become a shrine and how memories can trap and comfort you at the same time.
It’s important for authors to keep talking and writing about the AIDS crisis because the story isn’t finished and because so much of it was never told to begin with. I will always celebrate those who continue to ensure our queer brothers and sisters stories aren’t forgotten or softened.
October 17, 2025
A perfect book.
It captures a deeply bittersweet, beautiful love that bloomed between two men towards the end of the AIDS crisis in London, all inflected by love for the city (London) and how it was rapidly slipping away from them.
It couldn’t speak more clearly to my own sadness about living in the aftermath of that period in London, seeing the continued hollowing out of the city in the way that the story’s protagonist captures so clearly. So painful, but so moving, too is the explicit inevitability of the death of his love from AIDS.
I simply couldn’t recommend it more.
It captures a deeply bittersweet, beautiful love that bloomed between two men towards the end of the AIDS crisis in London, all inflected by love for the city (London) and how it was rapidly slipping away from them.
It couldn’t speak more clearly to my own sadness about living in the aftermath of that period in London, seeing the continued hollowing out of the city in the way that the story’s protagonist captures so clearly. So painful, but so moving, too is the explicit inevitability of the death of his love from AIDS.
I simply couldn’t recommend it more.
February 14, 2025
A raw, powerful and heartbreaking novel unlike anything I have ever read, and one that will be impossible to forget.
April 9, 2025
This is an excellent book about love and loss through the AIDS crisis, and I thought it’s written style conveyed the narrator’s thoughts very effectively. It is poignant, vivid, and at times very explicit but nonetheless a necessary and heartfelt read.
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