Henry Henry - 'Needs to be read right now' Brandon Taylor

They knew each other because their families knew each other: had known each other, for a long time Elegant, audacious and blisteringly funny, Henry Henry is a compelling portrait of privilege, inheritance, defiance and love - from a major new literary talent. London, 2014. Hal Lancaster - twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card - is the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster. Henry is half tyrant, half martyr, with an investment in his eldest son that has grown into an obsession. While Hal floats between internships and drinking sessions, Henry keeps him in check with passive-aggression, religious guilt, and a cruelty that Hal sometimes confuses for tenderness. When a grouse shooting accident - funny in retrospect - makes a romance out of Hal''s rivalry with fumblingly leftist family friend Harry Percy, Hal finds that he wants, for the first time, a life of his own. But his father Henry is an Englishman: he will not let his son escape tradition. To save himself, Hal must reckon not only with grief and shame but with the wounds of his family''s past.

About the author

Allen Bratton was born in the United States. He holds an MA in English Language and Literatures, having written a thesis on medieval English kingship. He is the winner of the 2021 Sewanee Review Fiction Contest and was longlisted for the 2021 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. Henry Henry, shortlisted for the 2025 Lammy Awards, is his debut novel.

Report

One of the most exciting new novels I've read in the past couple of months Financial Times

Product details

• Authors: Allen Bratton
• Publisher: JONATHAN CAPE
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 02.05.2024
• EAN: 9781787334595
• ISBN: 978-1-78733-459-5
• No. of pages: 336
• Dimensions: 144 mm x 223 mm x 29 mm
• Subjects: Education and learning > Readings/interpretations/reading notes > English; Fiction > Narrative literature; Romance, London, Greater London, FICTION / Coming of Age, FICTION / Humorous / General, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Fiction: pastiche, Relating to gay people, Relating to Christian people and groups, FICTION / LGBTQ+ / Gay, FICTION / Adaptations & Pastiche, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary, Modern and Contemporary romance, Relating to Shakespeare / Shakespearean, Relating to higher socioeconomic groups / status