Reviews - Henry Henry | The StoryGraph

374 reviews for:

Henry Henry

Allen Bratton

3.69 AVERAGE

dukhtar's review against another edition

3.5

challenging dark reflective tense fast-paced

steveob's review against another edition

5.0

Wow! What a phenomenal Debut by Mr Bratton. Normally I couldn't think of anything worse than rich British aristocrats whining for 350 pages but my god this was utterly enthralling. Following the story of Hal Lancaster was a stomach-churning, disgust-inducing, heart-wrenchingly queer re-telling of Shakespeare's 'Henriad'. This has also officially topped the list as one of my all-time favourite books.

Hal's story is one to which I can relate fiercely, his needs, his desires, the way he thinks and feels. All interposed with a sarcastic lilt and strikingly beautiful prose that left no description unimaginable to the reader. Bratton exercises such comedic wit juxtaposed in moments where there normally would be no need for it but it did help cut through the horror of things happening around him. I found myself chuckling, constantly, at the things Hal would say aloud.

This book is not all blue blood and laughter though, discussing some pretty dire themes of sexual and physical abuse as well as not shying away from the heavy usage of substances. Delt with and described in such a visceral way that there were times when I needed to take a breather and rot my brain on Instagram for a few moments before getting back into the thick of it.

Overall just an astounding book. Beauty within brutality. An instant classic in the library of B.

herdarklibrary's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

It’s a modern, queer, Shakespeare retelling… what more could I want?

This book delivered to me in so many ways. The characters were questionable, morally grey and fleshed out. For me I look for interesting characters and let it be said that non of these characters are particularly likeable but I still found them very interesting to read. They are messy and problematic and I couldn’t seem to stop reading with concern for what next terrible thing they would do.

From the above you can probably gather that this book is a character driven plot, which is my favourite type. You follow Hal and those around him through each misstep and cringe, side eye and sympathetically hope they can find some way to be redeemable.

Allen Bratten’s writing is very easy, I fell into the groove super quickly, and considering some of the theme choices e.g drugs, sexual abuse, religious guilt, incest - you can imagine my shock at how easy I found it. On the topic of themes, let me be clear this isn’t a happy go lucky book. It covers harsh and questionable problems that at times made me feel a little uncomfortable. Don’t pick this up without researching the content warnings!

I would say at times I got a little lost in conversations as I didn’t think it was always made very clear who was talking and when. I also didn’t love the text message conversations. Most of the time I just don’t like this in books; I’ve had it work a couple of times but I just didn’t like it in this book through purely my own preferences.

In the end I was engrossed in this book, and I think it’ll sit with me for awhile. My main advice is if you think you are going to give this book ago please prepare yourself and don’t go in blind because it could be triggering to some.

4/5 ⭐️

[ Thankyou so much to @VintageBooks for sending me this copy 🙌🏼 ]