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Albert
Albert Beaumont was born in the small coastal town of Pass Christian, Mississippi, in 1880. Throughout his life, he must grapple with the fact that he is different from those around him. Unlike his brothers and his friends, Albert finds himself attracted to other men, a secret he must keep close to his chest for fear of punishment by both his peers and the law. He struggles to understand and accept himself as he navigates a world that is entirely hostile to people like himself. When a letter from an English cousin arrives, inviting Albert to stay with her in England for the summer, he accepts, thus changing the course of his life forever. One day in 1908, an Irish steward named Edwin Fitzpatrick walks into his life. Edwin and Albert form a deep connection, but when fate threatens to break them apart and send Albert back to the United States, Albert must reckon with spending the rest of his life living a lie.
Albert follows the sometimes uplifting, sometimes heartbreaking life of Albert Beaumont as he moves from a troubled childhood in the Reconstruction-Era south, to an idyllic young adulthood working as an engineer in Edwardian England and Ireland, to a few years as an actor in the early-film era of 1920s Los Angeles before finally returning to the Mississippi shores of his youth in the early years of the Great Depression.
Albert follows the sometimes uplifting, sometimes heartbreaking life of Albert Beaumont as he moves from a troubled childhood in the Reconstruction-Era south, to an idyllic young adulthood working as an engineer in Edwardian England and Ireland, to a few years as an actor in the early-film era of 1920s Los Angeles before finally returning to the Mississippi shores of his youth in the early years of the Great Depression.
287 pages, Paperback
Published November 16, 2022
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October 19, 2025
What I liked best about this sweeping second novel by Hannah Baker, apart from her obvious gift for engaging, plot-turning dialogue, is the way it settles on well-established stages, each offering a terrain designed to either crush or create a protagonist we can’t help pulling for. Like Albert, one eventually feels the need to progress each time, to scrape together what is salvageable, and get out of town. In doing so he takes the reader and quite a swath of history along with him.
Populated with characters both frustratingly conventional and refreshingly not, Albert has never known true peace. He is trying to figure out his own motivations as the greater world seems to be stuck in theirs. Along the way there are happy times, oases of everyday joys and routine, whispering promises of a finally-arrived-at future. But without giving too much away, it’s just not that easy.
This book is filled with the purely hateful, the weak and the unreflective, but is also deeply sweet. Like Albert, I could do nothing else but continue to turn pages, hopeful and absorbed, until there were no more pages left. And like Ms. Baker’s first novel, these pages practically turn themselves.
Populated with characters both frustratingly conventional and refreshingly not, Albert has never known true peace. He is trying to figure out his own motivations as the greater world seems to be stuck in theirs. Along the way there are happy times, oases of everyday joys and routine, whispering promises of a finally-arrived-at future. But without giving too much away, it’s just not that easy.
This book is filled with the purely hateful, the weak and the unreflective, but is also deeply sweet. Like Albert, I could do nothing else but continue to turn pages, hopeful and absorbed, until there were no more pages left. And like Ms. Baker’s first novel, these pages practically turn themselves.
Displaying 1 of 1 review