This is an eclectic and thought-provoking book, a modern day fairy tale in which the dreams and lives of four people are linked together across time, bound by love, friendship and fate
During the Blitz a young woman, Iris, has a vision of two lovers in peril and knows it’s her destiny to help them. Robert, a wounded and repressed Battle of Britain pilot, dreams of happiness and of love. Charlie, a troubled little boy with growing up in the repressed suburbs of 1950s South London, dreams of the number ’80’ and knows only that it means something terrible and a dark, disturbed man dreams repeatedly of Charlie and knows it is his destiny to kill him.
It is a tale of a great gay love story and loss, destiny, tragedy, spiritual transformation and self-acceptance. The plot is fun and moves along at a brisk pace, in fact it kept me interested and reading it until I’d finished it, and it’s a great compliment to a writer who can hold my attention for the whole book so I feel I have to read it in one go. I stayed up till 2.45am to finish it, I had to know how it ended and wasn’t disappointed one bit.
The tension and plot just gets tighter the further into the book you go and Henden leaves no plot strand un-woven back into the rich weft of this complex and reassuring tale. No secrets are left untold and yet each one revealed, reveals more about the plot. In some soft echo of the interdependence and acceptance of its characters lives, loves and threats it’s very much like Armistead Maupin’s ‘Tales’ books and for a first book that’s high praise indeed Stevie.
The book is oddly profound in places, caught me off guard and almost moved me to tears, and gave me not one but two (count them) of the best gay deathbed scenes I’ve read in a long while (Lord Marchmain eat your heart out…). I was surprised by how subtly the characters interwoven relationships and believable feelings are expressed. The dialogue can be just the slightest bit clunky on occasion and perhaps a harder editor might have caught this, but considering the magical delight of the plot this is a small criticism.
The set pieces of gay London in the 80s’s are recognisable and authentic, I know, I was there then. The LGBT characters are wonderfully evocative of real people both creepy and joyful. The author covers the AIDS crisis with dignity and conveys the dark swift horror of those years when lovers, friends and family seemed to vanish in moments, but again Henden gives us a soft caring smile in the tears. The Valkyrien river memorial scene made me laugh out loud.
The plot is both terribly complicated and also very easy, on one level it’s a time travelling interwoven spiritual journey story of acceptance and coming of age with a savage murder mystery haunting it (phew…) and on the other, it’s about big gay love, plain and simple, although, as the book delights in pointing out, it’s rarely plain or simple to be in love.
This time-travelling tale moves between present day and World War Two London, the gay bars of the 1970s, Eva Peron’s Buenos Aires and Glastonbury Tor capturing each location with delight to make them come alive, I laughed – when Evita eventually appeared – at the audacity of the author and his ability to weave a cheeky plot line in with subtle delight, with a profoundly sad resonance holding the narrative together.
It felt like a very good and very gay Dr Who episode but with a much richer subtext and less of the moralising that even the great St Moffet tends towards. This book does have a moral, although I suspect the next time I read it, and that will be soon, the moral will change.
Stevie Henden is reading from The Lost boy at the Polari event at the Festival Hall on Tuesday July 30, if his real voice is a strong as the voices in this book the event will be a treat.
For more info on this evening view the Southbank website here:
You can also check out the authors face book page to see when they are next reading from this charming book
Highly recommended and just the most perfect book to take away on holiday with you and delight in opening. It’s just as much fun to curl up with on a rainy afternoon at home too. Don’t get put off by the time travel element as there’s very little of it, and the book is full of great camp and fun characters. Best of all, it’s a believable love story between two very different men who struggle to accept that love and then cherish it when they do. Heart-warming in lots of ways.
Out now Paperback £9 E-reader £3.99
For more info or to buy the paperback or eBook see the publishers website here:
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