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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
Well. Well! Well...
Henry Henry is a queer retelling of the Henriad, set in 2014 and following Hal, heir to the Dukedom, as he does copious amounts of cocaine, gets shot in the face, drinks to excess, falls into bed with people for various self-destructive reasons, and fucks his father who's been abusing him since he was a young teenager. Inconsistently interspersed between descriptions of these activities are too many details about his dead not-quite-uncle Richard.
The most painful part of this novel, contrary to some reviews, is not that the characters are bad people (some of them are; others are closer to just being pathetic), nor that the abuse is too upsetting (the book would be better if it was more upsetting). Rather, the most painful part of this novel is that the (American) author was very clearly on Tumblr in 2014, and the book's mentions of how annoying and tedious Catholic converts and London tourists are only serve to lampshade the narrator's immaturity and mimetic approach to adaptation.
A few quotes to illustrate what I mean:
This second is the book's opening paragraph.
It's not a crime to be a bit of a teaboo (forgive the term, but in my defense, it's appropriate for the 2014-on-Tumblr milieu we find ourselves in). But the book seeks to reinterpret the Henriad in service of interrogating trauma, queerness, Catholicism, and modern aristocracy. A narrative voice that sounds like an American undergraduate explaining the aristocracy to a friend who didn't have a Mitford phase just flat-out does not work in context. There are also lines I'm shocked weren't caught during edits; at the end of a frankly beautifully written paragraph describing all the many ways someone could vomit after having drunk to excess, there is this unbelievable clunker: "It was like doing penance when you had already been punishing yourself." I counted three "as you know, sir, [long infodump]"s as well. These are predictable missteps for a debut, but they were avoidable.
Unfortunately, the narrator's immature voice can't be explained just by Hal being in his early 20s. Consistently throughout the book, characters are talking about "drugs": doing them, acquiring them, sharing them. Coke and molly are occasionally mentioned by name, but for the most part people as disparate as background characters and Hal himself are saying things like "are you doing drugs? Can I have some?" I haven't been a young person since, well, 2014, but I was never around anyone who spoke like that. It's very jarring, and it lends the vivid, well-written descriptions of cocaine-related septum damage a pallor of Wikipedia.
The narration itself is often confused. For the most part this book is a relatively close 3rd person POV. There are inconsistencies, however, that again should have been caught and fixed; in one chapter, the narrator gives us a spontaneous description of Hal's father Henry's thoughts, and a few chapters later we are once again treated to a description of Henry's thoughts, but carefully informed that such an observation was possible because Hal could briefly see him. This is a book where both the unreliable narrator's dissociation from and his intimate relationship to his abusive father are key themes driving the narrative forward and shaping our understanding of Hal: you can't let us see the drywall tape.
Speaking of themes. The book is being billed as "about" queerness, Catholicism, and abuse. The original Henriad was "about" kingship and civil war. So there is a lot of ground to cover in terms of making the reader feel the stakes of the narrative and the texture of the protagonist's world.
This is a book that manages to be both rigorously and incoherently Catholic. On the one hand, you have a Dukedom whose family members are uncompromisingly and unpopularly Catholic. Their Catholicism impacts their finances and marriage prospects (which are, of course, their finances). Henry prays eight times a day "like a Benedictine". Hal is obsessed with authority. They go to confession. They are married by the priest who knows the groom is fucking his son. They observe Lent. Hal believes in the literal truth of the Bible and that he is damned for coitus outside marriage. Etc.
But it's a weird setup, because the book is set in this our modern age; the aristocrats here behave mostly like any squabbling wealthy family would. Henry "gives up" things for Lent sometimes but doesn't fast. Hal experiences Catholic mysticism at the well-edited beginning and end of the book but forgets God for long stretches in the middle. Being spiritually Protestant and mentally agnostic while observing the traditions of Roman Catholicism make perfect sense for aristocrats in times and places where such a thing was expected regardless of personal belief. That is not true of England today, and it wasn't true of England in 2014, either. I would expect an extremely religious modern family to articulate modern religious fervor. For the most part, Hal's family doesn't.
There is also a more troubling issue with the book's Catholicism. In the bulk of the novel, church is something that happens off the page. There are a few scenes where Hal attends services; his confessions are largely summarized. The scenes describing the service are focused on the Lana-to-Red-Scare-pipeline, which is to say Tumblr, aesthetics: the incense, the communion, the wine. But Hal himself thinks of his abuse in specifically Catholic terms. Henry is the father; Hal is the son. Hal is commanded by God to submit to Henry. Hal is Henry's seed, an extension of himself. And then of course there are the pedophile priests. Point of order, as someone raised in an SBC stronghold: the authority which leads to religious abuse and religious justification of incestuous abuse is not restricted to any given sect, denomination, or religion. To focus so intently and yet so shallowly on Catholicism is to point a reductive lens at the abuse you're attempting to describe as a product of authority.
In some passages, the author handpuppets long enough to uneasily inform us that he knows about Northern Ireland, about imperialism, that his characters are Tories, and so on. Again: Tumblr! So I want to be clear that I'm not saying he should have Henry Percy say, "And obviously of course Catholics aren't uniquely abusive." There is a throughline of Hal being specifically lonely both in his queerness and in the precise shape of his abuse. All of these aristocrats hurt each other, but Hal and his father are trapped in a particularly grody bit of amber. I would have preferred that the rambling sentences dedicated to exclusively drawing parallels between Hal's Catholicism and his relationship with his father were not some of the only times the book directly looks at Hal's understanding of the abuse. Again, this is a point of view issue: Hal is repressed and thinking around the issue to the very last page. If you're going to break that affect to represent his understanding of things, you need to do a bit more groundwork establishing that Hal is not the only child in the entire world being raped by his father.
The abuse itself, both the actual sex scenes and Hal's mental state throughout the novel, is very well written. I don't agree with reviewers who think the sex is intended to be shocking. I would assume the author put a lot of thought into this portrayal; either care shows on the page or it was manufactured so effectively that it's a distinction without a difference. The incestuous relationship isn't just character background, though; it's one of the novel's main sources of dramatic tension, and when evaluated through this lens, the project stumbles again. Hal does not end this novel in a hard break with Henry (and if you thought he would, baby, they created New Adult just for you). Through the back half of the book, however, he does come to assert his independence from his father, and we leave him having just told his father no. A story of alienation and rebuilt selfhood whose denouement is an assertion of agency is a perfectly good story to tell, but it's not really an adequate replacement for succession drama and civil war, and this book is so dedicated to being a reinterpretation of the Henriad that the reader is asked to sit through multi-page explanations of how people came to fuck each other roughly how they did in 1410, in 1978.
What I find most striking about this ending is that for the first half of the book, we're treated to a description of debauchery that rivals Cat Marnell's memoir. Hal is fracturing under the weight of what his father's done to him, and what he sees himself as having done with his father. This conflict creates excellent dramatic tension, a claustrophobic sense of dread. You know something is terribly wrong, and you're starting to realize you know what's wrong, and it's sickening. This is great! But it does mean that when Hal starts changing, in fits and starts, the novel's main sources of tension become familial drama, horrifying sex, and the intersections thereof. This massively weakens the novel to the point that a dramatic brawl at Henry's wedding is a quick skim-read.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the back half of the novel is also where we are asked to care about pages and pages of people talking about Richard, a character who was dead before the book began. I have over one million words of fanfiction posted to AO3 so believe me when I say, I know what a ficcer losing focus in their WIP and bringing in another fave looks like.
I will end this review on a positive note. As I mentioned, the beginning and end of the novel are much tighter than the middle. There are passages that are truly beautiful. Bratton's command over point of view specifically with regards to dissociation, repression, and trauma are genuinely breathtaking. I would not be writing this review if the glimpses of a much better book didn't make the moments of slobbering over old buildings while the characters 'pip-pip-wot-wot' their way through doing 'drugs' so infuriating. But, ultimately, it's a 1:4 ratio, and as they say where I'm from, that dog ain't gonna hunt.
Henry Henry is a queer retelling of the Henriad, set in 2014 and following Hal, heir to the Dukedom, as he does copious amounts of cocaine, gets shot in the face, drinks to excess, falls into bed with people for various self-destructive reasons, and fucks his father who's been abusing him since he was a young teenager. Inconsistently interspersed between descriptions of these activities are too many details about his dead not-quite-uncle Richard.
The most painful part of this novel, contrary to some reviews, is not that the characters are bad people (some of them are; others are closer to just being pathetic), nor that the abuse is too upsetting (the book would be better if it was more upsetting). Rather, the most painful part of this novel is that the (American) author was very clearly on Tumblr in 2014, and the book's mentions of how annoying and tedious Catholic converts and London tourists are only serve to lampshade the narrator's immaturity and mimetic approach to adaptation.
A few quotes to illustrate what I mean:
Hal shook the coke out onto a plastic-backed hand mirror, which, when it was not being used for drug-taking, Hal used in the service of trimming the hair around his balls.
At Jack’s flat, he let you smoke indoors. Hal went out for a fag anyway and saw that the sun had risen; there was warm spring light on him. He walked up the road against a perpetual flow of small children in embroidered jumpers and rounded collars, and got on a bus that would take him northwest across the Thames. The sun was on his right shoulder and his temple was on the window. He struggled to fix his eyes on the back of the man in front of him. His own stink hovered about him: skunky weed, spilled Pimm’s and gin, cigarettes smoked in a flat that had had a lot of cigarettes smoked in it before, the vile mix of sweat and deodorant that had congealed under his armpits and was soaking through his pale blue oxford shirt. Sensing he was about to feel very bad, he took his aviators off the neck of his shirt and put them on his face. The bus was passing across Vauxhall Bridge; the sun was in the scummy green water, making it look almost translucent, as if it were more water than filth. Literally the most fucking beautiful thing, he thought. Here I am in London in the twenty-first century, and there’s the Thames that was there when the first Duke of Lancaster was born, and there’s the long-lived sun.
This second is the book's opening paragraph.
It's not a crime to be a bit of a teaboo (forgive the term, but in my defense, it's appropriate for the 2014-on-Tumblr milieu we find ourselves in). But the book seeks to reinterpret the Henriad in service of interrogating trauma, queerness, Catholicism, and modern aristocracy. A narrative voice that sounds like an American undergraduate explaining the aristocracy to a friend who didn't have a Mitford phase just flat-out does not work in context. There are also lines I'm shocked weren't caught during edits; at the end of a frankly beautifully written paragraph describing all the many ways someone could vomit after having drunk to excess, there is this unbelievable clunker: "It was like doing penance when you had already been punishing yourself." I counted three "as you know, sir, [long infodump]"s as well. These are predictable missteps for a debut, but they were avoidable.
Unfortunately, the narrator's immature voice can't be explained just by Hal being in his early 20s. Consistently throughout the book, characters are talking about "drugs": doing them, acquiring them, sharing them. Coke and molly are occasionally mentioned by name, but for the most part people as disparate as background characters and Hal himself are saying things like "are you doing drugs? Can I have some?" I haven't been a young person since, well, 2014, but I was never around anyone who spoke like that. It's very jarring, and it lends the vivid, well-written descriptions of cocaine-related septum damage a pallor of Wikipedia.
The narration itself is often confused. For the most part this book is a relatively close 3rd person POV. There are inconsistencies, however, that again should have been caught and fixed; in one chapter, the narrator gives us a spontaneous description of Hal's father Henry's thoughts, and a few chapters later we are once again treated to a description of Henry's thoughts, but carefully informed that such an observation was possible because Hal could briefly see him. This is a book where both the unreliable narrator's dissociation from and his intimate relationship to his abusive father are key themes driving the narrative forward and shaping our understanding of Hal: you can't let us see the drywall tape.
Speaking of themes. The book is being billed as "about" queerness, Catholicism, and abuse. The original Henriad was "about" kingship and civil war. So there is a lot of ground to cover in terms of making the reader feel the stakes of the narrative and the texture of the protagonist's world.
This is a book that manages to be both rigorously and incoherently Catholic. On the one hand, you have a Dukedom whose family members are uncompromisingly and unpopularly Catholic. Their Catholicism impacts their finances and marriage prospects (which are, of course, their finances). Henry prays eight times a day "like a Benedictine". Hal is obsessed with authority. They go to confession. They are married by the priest who knows the groom is fucking his son. They observe Lent. Hal believes in the literal truth of the Bible and that he is damned for coitus outside marriage. Etc.
But it's a weird setup, because the book is set in this our modern age; the aristocrats here behave mostly like any squabbling wealthy family would. Henry "gives up" things for Lent sometimes but doesn't fast. Hal experiences Catholic mysticism at the well-edited beginning and end of the book but forgets God for long stretches in the middle. Being spiritually Protestant and mentally agnostic while observing the traditions of Roman Catholicism make perfect sense for aristocrats in times and places where such a thing was expected regardless of personal belief. That is not true of England today, and it wasn't true of England in 2014, either. I would expect an extremely religious modern family to articulate modern religious fervor. For the most part, Hal's family doesn't.
There is also a more troubling issue with the book's Catholicism. In the bulk of the novel, church is something that happens off the page. There are a few scenes where Hal attends services; his confessions are largely summarized. The scenes describing the service are focused on the Lana-to-Red-Scare-pipeline, which is to say Tumblr, aesthetics: the incense, the communion, the wine. But Hal himself thinks of his abuse in specifically Catholic terms. Henry is the father; Hal is the son. Hal is commanded by God to submit to Henry. Hal is Henry's seed, an extension of himself. And then of course there are the pedophile priests. Point of order, as someone raised in an SBC stronghold: the authority which leads to religious abuse and religious justification of incestuous abuse is not restricted to any given sect, denomination, or religion. To focus so intently and yet so shallowly on Catholicism is to point a reductive lens at the abuse you're attempting to describe as a product of authority.
In some passages, the author handpuppets long enough to uneasily inform us that he knows about Northern Ireland, about imperialism, that his characters are Tories, and so on. Again: Tumblr! So I want to be clear that I'm not saying he should have Henry Percy say, "And obviously of course Catholics aren't uniquely abusive." There is a throughline of Hal being specifically lonely both in his queerness and in the precise shape of his abuse. All of these aristocrats hurt each other, but Hal and his father are trapped in a particularly grody bit of amber. I would have preferred that the rambling sentences dedicated to exclusively drawing parallels between Hal's Catholicism and his relationship with his father were not some of the only times the book directly looks at Hal's understanding of the abuse. Again, this is a point of view issue: Hal is repressed and thinking around the issue to the very last page. If you're going to break that affect to represent his understanding of things, you need to do a bit more groundwork establishing that Hal is not the only child in the entire world being raped by his father.
The abuse itself, both the actual sex scenes and Hal's mental state throughout the novel, is very well written. I don't agree with reviewers who think the sex is intended to be shocking. I would assume the author put a lot of thought into this portrayal; either care shows on the page or it was manufactured so effectively that it's a distinction without a difference. The incestuous relationship isn't just character background, though; it's one of the novel's main sources of dramatic tension, and when evaluated through this lens, the project stumbles again. Hal does not end this novel in a hard break with Henry (and if you thought he would, baby, they created New Adult just for you). Through the back half of the book, however, he does come to assert his independence from his father, and we leave him having just told his father no. A story of alienation and rebuilt selfhood whose denouement is an assertion of agency is a perfectly good story to tell, but it's not really an adequate replacement for succession drama and civil war, and this book is so dedicated to being a reinterpretation of the Henriad that the reader is asked to sit through multi-page explanations of how people came to fuck each other roughly how they did in 1410, in 1978.
What I find most striking about this ending is that for the first half of the book, we're treated to a description of debauchery that rivals Cat Marnell's memoir. Hal is fracturing under the weight of what his father's done to him, and what he sees himself as having done with his father. This conflict creates excellent dramatic tension, a claustrophobic sense of dread. You know something is terribly wrong, and you're starting to realize you know what's wrong, and it's sickening. This is great! But it does mean that when Hal starts changing, in fits and starts, the novel's main sources of tension become familial drama, horrifying sex, and the intersections thereof. This massively weakens the novel to the point that a dramatic brawl at Henry's wedding is a quick skim-read.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the back half of the novel is also where we are asked to care about pages and pages of people talking about Richard, a character who was dead before the book began. I have over one million words of fanfiction posted to AO3 so believe me when I say, I know what a ficcer losing focus in their WIP and bringing in another fave looks like.
I will end this review on a positive note. As I mentioned, the beginning and end of the novel are much tighter than the middle. There are passages that are truly beautiful. Bratton's command over point of view specifically with regards to dissociation, repression, and trauma are genuinely breathtaking. I would not be writing this review if the glimpses of a much better book didn't make the moments of slobbering over old buildings while the characters 'pip-pip-wot-wot' their way through doing 'drugs' so infuriating. But, ultimately, it's a 1:4 ratio, and as they say where I'm from, that dog ain't gonna hunt.
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Incest, Sexual assault, Sexual violence
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The City and the Pillar, Thank You for Everything Julie Newmar…dare we say Catcher in the Rye? A queer coming of age story that follows and breaks with tradition. Unabashedly queer and messy, the books main character has a little bit of us all and also enough of his own story you might not be able to put it down.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Incest, Rape
The book has some deeply upsetting and graphic depictions of sexual assault of a child. Although as a survivor of abuse I would say it was handled well and respectfully.
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There is not much worse than an evil parent!!! This book was a tough read I’d describe it as “A Little Life” lite. But it was well done, the narration was interesting and a little chaotic (which aligns with the main characters drug use and trauma). It’s not something I’d recommend anyone read but at the same time think it was good… hence the 3 stars.
”It had been some weeks since his last confession, and he had all the usual sins to cover: drinking, drugs, sexual fantasies, masturbation, lies, gossip, snobbery, a lack of charity towards the poor and vulnerable…”
I requested and received an ARC of this novel from Unnamed Press via NetGalley. Henry, Henry is dark and thoroughly entertaining. When I read the blurb for this novel I was immediately interested. A queer reimagining of the Henriad? Absolutely down for that. A petulant, little sissy Prince Hal? Fabulous. This novel hit me with a range of feelings. I was disgusted, amused, depressed, angered! So many emotions are packed into this book and while the story took a much different turn than the one I was anticipating, I found it entirely worthwhile in the end.
Henry, Henry almost gives Saltburn as done by Lana del Rey vibes. I found the novel to be a terrific character study. Our Hal may not be entirely likable, a fact he is well aware of as noble without a cause, but he is an incredibly entertaining (and rarely sober) protagonist. Buried beneath layers of biting wit and snobbery, Bratton infuses the story with ample opportunity for the reader to develop sympathy for an otherwise pitiable Hal as his history and relationships unfold.
The vivid cast of characters and the immediacy of Bratton’s writing entangle the reader within the narrative so effectively that it is difficult to put this book down without feeling invested in the well-being of (some of) our characters (poor little Henry Percy!) This novel navigates dark themes in a complex (sometimes repulsive, sometimes sensitive) manner. At times the writing is loud, clustered and confused, at other times quiet and cutting, much like the characters Bratton paints on the page. With passages that felt like gut punches, but never gratuitous, and with a unique point of view Henry, Henry engaged me in ways that I did not expect.
I requested and received an ARC of this novel from Unnamed Press via NetGalley. Henry, Henry is dark and thoroughly entertaining. When I read the blurb for this novel I was immediately interested. A queer reimagining of the Henriad? Absolutely down for that. A petulant, little sissy Prince Hal? Fabulous. This novel hit me with a range of feelings. I was disgusted, amused, depressed, angered! So many emotions are packed into this book and while the story took a much different turn than the one I was anticipating, I found it entirely worthwhile in the end.
Henry, Henry almost gives Saltburn as done by Lana del Rey vibes. I found the novel to be a terrific character study. Our Hal may not be entirely likable, a fact he is well aware of as noble without a cause, but he is an incredibly entertaining (and rarely sober) protagonist. Buried beneath layers of biting wit and snobbery, Bratton infuses the story with ample opportunity for the reader to develop sympathy for an otherwise pitiable Hal as his history and relationships unfold.
The vivid cast of characters and the immediacy of Bratton’s writing entangle the reader within the narrative so effectively that it is difficult to put this book down without feeling invested in the well-being of (some of) our characters (poor little Henry Percy!) This novel navigates dark themes in a complex (sometimes repulsive, sometimes sensitive) manner. At times the writing is loud, clustered and confused, at other times quiet and cutting, much like the characters Bratton paints on the page. With passages that felt like gut punches, but never gratuitous, and with a unique point of view Henry, Henry engaged me in ways that I did not expect.
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
