Foto dell'autore

Tom Crewe (1) (1989–)

Autore di The New Life

Per altri autori con il nome Tom Crewe, vedi la pagina di disambiguazione.

1 opera 229 membri 6 recensioni

Opere di Tom Crewe

The New Life (2023) 229 copie

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Utenti

Recensioni

I had been looking forward to this one for a few months but it was .. not great. I love the concept but it could have been handled so much better. The pacing especially threw me off, it feels both bloated and underdeveloped somehow.
 
Segnalato
femmedyke | 5 altre recensioni | Sep 27, 2023 |
If the last book I read, [I Capture the Castle] by Dodie Smith, opened with one of the best lines I have read, this book opens with one of the most explicit scenes of sex I have read, full of desire and panic, but turns out to be a dream and so very neatly sets the scene for the whole book. Set in the Victorian era, this is a tale of two men and their marriages and the idea of the New Life.

John Addington is married to Catherine with whom he has three children. But this marriage is a smoke screen for Addington's homosexuality, something he has tried to hide and deny until he can do so no more.

Henry Ellis is married to Edith in a marriage which they have both agreed to separate sex and being married. They live separately, and in fact Edith is a lesbian and has affairs with women, ending up living with Angelica. Ellis has fetishes which he finds he is unable to tell anyone about and is a shy man who prefers to be with Edith writing and thinking. They both believe that marriage can mean 'new things'.

Both men have an admiration for the poet Walt Whitman whose poetry suggests that he is gay, although there is debate naowadays about whether that is enough evidence to say so definitively, and through this admiration come to hear about each other. Ellis suggests they write a book together about homosexuality containing case studies and scientific thinking and Addington agrees. Its purpose is to try and change the law that says men can not be with men.

Just before the book is published, Wilde goes to trial and is found guilty and this divides the opinions of Ellis and Addington about what should happen with their book. Ellis feels they shouldn't publish or draw attention to themselves, Addington wants to at any cost and bullies his way to it happening although it costs him dearly. Eventually, a bookseller who sells one of their books is caught and the case is judged to be serious enough to go to trial.

The book is about the moral complexity of such a case. Is it better to change world through private actions, living the life you want but quietly? Or, should there be public acts which force others to think about the situation and to come down on one side or the other?

He (Ellis) wished that he belonged to the common herd, nuzzling in easy ignorance.
p286

Throughout the book there are strands of class, education and type of character all woven together in this impossible moral problem. How do you push for changes in the law? Why shouldn't you let the world know who you are and who you love?

The writing is sublime. Precise and flowing and changing in tempo for Wilde's trial, suggesting the clamour of people wanting to know more.

These were John's days of dread. His months: March to May. When everything secret, hidden, whispered was shouted, pasted printed. When everything unmentionable was warmed in every maudlin, moral mouth. When what was nameless became nothing but names.

Leaders, letters, speeches. Handbills, placards, pictures. Chalkings on walls. Crowds on corners. Jeerers. Jurors. When John felt himself exposed, sprawled on the slimed wreck of his privacy, at the world's mercy. Except it was not his privacy.
p220

Eroticism also runs through the book.

The rain started that night, while he was lying awake in bed, with a sound like sheets being shaken out. It grew in strength until it roared, till he could see in his mind the lances of rain, striking at the street so hard that they splintered and jagged back into the air. After it was finished he lay listening to the glug and gurgle of the drains and gutters, the silence of shocked pavements.
p217

As a book it is a tour de force.
… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
allthegoodbooks | 5 altre recensioni | Sep 11, 2023 |
I will start by saying the reader, Freddie Fox, is amazing. I am so glad I chose to do the audiobook for this. The book is beautifully written, a bit old fashioned in style, but in all the best ways. Often I want to read rather than listen when prose is well crafted, but Fox got me over that.

This piece of historical fiction is sad, engaging, and edifying. I did not know about the 19th century book that was the subject of this novel. Written and published in England "Sexual Inverts" (this was a euphemistic way of referring to those who desired people of the same gender) approached homosexuality from a scientific perspective. I had also not heard of its authors, John Addington Symonds and Henry Havelock Ellis. Ellis was a of a scientific bent, and also had a "perversion" of his own he was working toward explaining through science. Symonds was a man of means, a husband and father, who loved men, and eventually one man. Symonds participated in writing Sexual Inverts in the hope that it would lead to freedom for all homosexuals.

Crewe messed around with the timing a bit here, moving the events later so that in this novel as they were writing the book the trial of Oscar Wilde took place. At that point hatred for homosexuals went from something that was not often spoken of to a regular topic steeped in virulent public hatred. The clips of things actually written in the media at the time are horrifying. A side note -- check out the Wikipedia for John Addington Symonds and click on the links for his children where available. It was a very interesting family.

I don't want to share details because it is hard to even talk about the various relationships at play here (both men were married, Symonds had many children and two characters also have side relationships with other partners) without diminishing the narrative tension. I will say that one of the main characters mentions that he had no expectation of ever being happy, that he sought and clung to serenity, and that broke my heart, especially when I realized that most of the main characters could have said the same. I would be remiss if I did not mention that there is a good deal of graphic sex talk that is precise, descriptive, and honestly a bit icky. There is one scene where Symonds imagines and describes in detail walking across the room and taking his daughter's husband's penis into his mouth, where he imagines how it would feel against his tongue. There are many allusions to cum (Julie and James, I am not referring to cumin here) drying in beards and on bellies and trouser fronts. There are also many non-judgmental allusions to pederasty, and I learned in my Wiki search that one of Symonds' children was a vocal advocate for the joys of having sex with the newly pubescent. While non-judgmental regarding the sexual activities of consenting adults I judge hard when it comes to adults who have sex with children and I have no patience for those who do not judge.

The book is not perfect, there are stretches where it is boring, and points where changes in time and perspective are confusing, but it is very good and shines a light on a historical moment that I knew too little about.
… (altro)
 
Segnalato
Narshkite | 5 altre recensioni | Jul 30, 2023 |
“No substantial change has ever been managed without risk.”

In his debut novel Tom Crewe presents a deeply moving fictionalised account of two real men and their revolutionary book.

It is 1894, John Addington - a wealthy middle aged married man with three grown daughters and a repressed homosexual - and Henry Ellis - a newly wed whose wife is in love with another woman - decide to write a book together on sexual inversion, more commonly now referred to as homosexuality. Each man has his own personal interest in the book’s subject which is meant as a scientific text and sympathetic exploration of the accounts of male tendencies (female inverts not as interesting as they were not punishable by law - for another book perhaps). Just before they are published the Oscar Wilde case erupts and puts them all at risk.

The first chapter opens with an explicit scene that puts you in no doubt as to the subject of the story. I found the first half of this book, while well written, quite slow as John and Henry navigate their lives and the development of the book through correspondence. It was only after Oscar Wilde is arrested and tried we see the real drama and emotion of the story come into play. Wilde's conviction leads the men (and the women they share their lives with) through the gamut of disbelief, fear, anger, bravery, and naivety as they proceed with the publication and all the difficulties that come from it.

Reading this book as a queer woman was heart-breaking and frustrating. On one hand I felt a kinship to the feelings and emotions of the those who had to live their lives without being fully able to be themselves and the inhumanity of how they were treated but on the other hand I found some - John especially - quite naïve in how he expected the society to treat and react to the book.

Tom Crewe has achieved an amazing task of portraying a time in British history and a community that is often in the shadows and a poignant reminder of how far we have come.
… (altro)
 
Segnalato
rosienotrose | 5 altre recensioni | Jul 11, 2023 |

Liste

Premi e riconoscimenti

Potrebbero anche piacerti

Autori correlati

Statistiche

Opere
1
Utenti
229
Popolarità
#98,340
Voto
4.1
Recensioni
6
ISBN
16
Lingue
3

Grafici & Tabelle