The House on Brooke Street

Neil Bartlett's The House on Brooke Street is a wonderfully written look at the repressive 1950's in Britain. It has the erotic charge and the creepy paranoid (with good reason) fear mixed in equal measures to make this novel feel vivid and authentic. The unnamed lead chararcter takes the reader through his encounters and furtive loves through the decades to when he writes it all down in 1956 in a very compulsive manner that is sad and lonely with the thin shadows of anger, rebellion and triumph creeping in on the edges. It is an evocative look at a time but also a look at a time about to change. A very knowing, readable novel.

You know what I'm going to say don't you Mr Bartlett. That the book glows in memory. As dramatic story. Dead bodies all over, stairs to be climbed, and more. But also the aesthetic-and-the-psychological. Organic form's theme with repetitions all over. The early infatuation appearing, submerging, resurfacing all one's life long....And history too. The days of the cosmic-sized closet, "over now" supposedly right Mr Bartlett, but maybe not so after all. I know about it, growing up across the Pond in the land of the free in the Sixties. Giving that alias. In bars, using the life-facts of a friend instead of yourself, for anonymity. Experiencing the bar and party atmosphere pre-Stonewall--secretive, furtive. And so this book goes on my blue-ribbon shelf of best books ever. The arrow-thrust of Desire all life long wrapping up one's biography....Oh the other novel, the story of Boy and O, also good but more black-and-white, this book here is technicolor swoops and swirls....Because you created "emerging realizations on every page" didn't you Mr Bartlett. Achieving true Literature at last, and I only hope those who can appreciate it, will come to it--if they do, they will....

Neil Bartlett achieves the power to hypnotise the reader with this book. If your ideal reading experience is one where the book makes you forget where you are and what time it is,buy this book. It is almost impossible to describe the effect of reading "The House on Brooke Street" (published also under the alternative title "Mr Clive and Mr Page"). The diary extracts of the male protaganist, Mr Page, a lower class shop worker in 1950's London, flicker back and forth between his middle-aged present and his youthful encounter with Mr Clive, an upper class toff, and evoke the loneliness, repression,discrimination and class that almost extinguish Mr Page's humanity. Mr Page's stubborn survival is a triumph, as is this book.

Bartlett has made huge literary leaps and bounds since "Ready to Catch Him." "The House on Brooke Street" (called "Mr. Clive & Mr. Page" in the UK) is a psychologically realistic first-person account of a homosexual man in early 20th century London trying to exist with English dignity while fulfilling his "unspeakably" real-human desires.A compelling psychological profile emerges starting with an obscure (factual) description of a late Victorian home in central London, which Bartlett cleverly weaves into journal entries (Mr. Page has a huge rhetorical palette), recounted dialogue, and a host of pertinent "real-life" historical tidbits. As the narrator uncovers bits of truth about himself, the reader uncovers the truth about the mysterious and often bizarre events of the story. For Bartlett, the truth is evasive and only partially attainable: the facts don't always add up, the narrator's judgements often conflict, the lines between fantasy and reality are constantly blurred, both in our world and in the world of the book.This book means a lot to me personally because it is one of the first fictional works I've read with a "homosexual theme" that simultaneously avoids gratuitous fantasy and delusion while breaking new ground in terms of form and style. I love it because it is absolutely unlike anything I've ever read: you won't find a character like Mr. Page anywhere. Mr. Page is a real homosexual person, not an archetype. I must say, though, that I wasn't really thinking about politics as I was reading, (and Bartlett probably wasn't concerned with such a simple "message" when he wrote it). Any reader, gay or straight, can understand and feel the emotional (or psychological) "action"; anyone can appreciate Bartlett's often ingenious writing.Zach Victor

This book haunted me for months. It is a novel of grief, and of courage. Its non-linear form may disconcert naive readers, but is ultimately rewarding. It is not a light read, and not a "happy-ever-after," but definitely not depressing. Besides being a love story, and a mystery, it is a vivid reminder of the oppression that for too long has been inflicted on anyone outside the heterosexual majority. Reading this novel reinforced my determination to stand against the Helms of the world. We mustn't let the anti-gay coterie return us to that arid world in which the closet was the only habitable room in the house.