Reviews - Henry Henry | The StoryGraph

375 reviews for:

Henry Henry

Allen Bratton

3.69 AVERAGE

lit_latte_livre's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Henry Henry is a fantastically well-written debut novel that follows Hal Lancaster and his relationships with his family, his romantic interests, and the Catholic church, starting in London 2014. But before we get into the review, this novel has a lot of trigger warnings.

TW: sexual assault, incest, eating disorders, blood, death of AIDS, homophobia.

Despite Hal’s wealth, and really because of it, nothing is going right in his life, and Bratton’s incredible prose immediately draws the reader in and immerses the reader, despite Hal knowingly being quite a terrible person. However, any dislike for Hal doesn’t last for long with the incredible empathy and sympathy that are drawn out of the powerful interiority.

His father has been sexually abusing him since he was an adolescent, and created an incredibly strong dissonance between Hal’s sexuality and the Catholic church. This theme resonates throughout the novel, and created a huge takeaway of the complexity of deeply-ingrained, yet harmful childhood beliefs. This all ties in and the tension is elevated as we learn about Richard, Hal’s uncle who died of AIDS.

The major highlights of this book for me were Hal’s relationship with his sister Philippa, and his partner, Harry Percy. Without spoiling too much, these character’s foiled and mirrored Hal so, incredibly well, and made me long for what both me and Hal wanted, but knew would never happen because change was so impossible to achieve.

There were times where I was disgusted by Hal, and others where I just wanted to give him a big hug, and I was absolutely here for it. He is a deeply flawed person, and he knows it, which I think is something really unique that Bratton does in his writing. It really changes the narrative about how people come at Hal, when they don’t have the leverage of hurting Hal by saying he’s a bad person.

The ending, I feel was so, so fitting. While the topic turned a little bit from what I thought it would be, it wrapped up so wonderfully, and showed the character development, and showed how hard Hal was trying to fight this deep, painful trauma.

Recommend for: lovers of immersive prose, Shakespeare references, and complex, toxic relationships.

mmccombs's review against another edition

3.5

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

While the writing and developed themes were incredibly compelling, I mostly found reading this to be a chore. I had a difficult time getting into this, I was not really into Hal as a character so I never quite felt motivated to pick the book up.

However, once we got to the incident with Harry Percy, I suddenly felt invested. I loved the charm between these characters, the way their differences and similarities bounced off one another.

But then the energy and momentum of the story kind of fizzled out for me, a lot of the action felt repetitive and I was waiting for a bit more development from these characters.

I did love the connection between Catholicism (and a lot of guilt), Hal’s relationship with his father (complicated, to say the least), the long line of history that tethered this family together, and the Shakespearian-ness of it all. The sentence-level craft of it was well done, so even though the story didn’t totally work for me, the structure of it did.

I have a feeling that this will be a polarizing book people will have opinions about, but if you are a reader that prefers (messy) character-driven novels, enjoyed the Henriad (or maybe even Succession), and are down for some privileged white boy drama, I think this will be a book for you.

Thanks to NetGalley and Unnamed Press for the eARC!

Content Warnings

eastofreality's review against another edition

2.0

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: Complicated

Not the book for me. There is no character growth, no character arc, just 300 pages of watching the main character exist. It's static, boring, frustrating and I found myself hoping he'd die at the end just so something would happen. Alas, he lives.

fiendfull's review against another edition

3.0

Henry Henry is a literary fiction loose retelling of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays, bringing Hal into the twenty-first century as a gay Catholic son of the Duke of Lancaster. It is 2014 and Hal Lancaster drinks and gets high to avoid his father, but when an unlikely invitation to join family friend Harry Percy at a shooting retreat turns into a romance, Hal's life is pulled in more directions, balancing shame and guilt and addiction with the possibility of something different to what his father wants for him.

As someone who has been obsessed with the Henry IV plays and read plenty of Shakespeare retellings (including Henry IV ones), I was intrigued to see how Henry Henry would approach the play and also how it would be a novel. After finishing the book, I'm still a bit conflicted about how it relates to Henry IV, as it feels to me like it occupies a middle ground between between a faithful adaptation (which it is definitely not) and being a very loose adaption, because it does adhere to having most of the characters from the plays (and more from history) to the extent it almost doesn't work without knowledge of the plays, but then deviates from the themes and plot of the plays a lot, perhaps making it better to not know what it is based on. In some ways, I like this, because it really does reimagine the plays as something different, but it is confusing that it has such a precise cast and some key story elements retold, and then other elements and the overall arc not matching up at all.

Told from a third-person perspective, the book explores a lot—sexual abuse, Catholic guilt, addiction, eating disorders, the treatment of people with AIDS—whilst also notably not really exploring other areas. The monarchy has been removed, and indeed is barely even referenced to, and the layers of class issues present both in the original plays and the scenarios of this retelling get a bit lost in the mix, so the book ends up being a bit 'wow rich people' without really saying anything about this. The Catholicism in the book is A Lot (one of the characters even complains that the Catholic guilt is A Lot), and I imagine people interested in it will really like how entwined it is with everything (and there's something interesting about taking a play set when the characters were Catholic by default and making the characters Catholic as something more unusual in modern day London).

In terms of characters, the endeavour of having so many of the characters from the plays and real historical figures is a notable choice, and it works well in some places. For example, modern Henry IV retellings do well by making Philippa appear as Hal's youngest, wayward sister who can be a reflection of him in a different way to other characters are reflections of him. Both Falstaff and Poins are quickly sidelined and generally the 'Eastcheap' part of the plays is downplayed hugely, a sort of sticky carpeted Wetherspoons vibe that Hal leaves for Catholic guilt and Harry Percy's much posher leftism. Hal's brothers become interchangeable, which is fair, and generally a lot of the characters recede as the novel progresses, so it becomes mostly Hal and Henry, with occasional family members and Harry Percy. The third person narration keeps a bit of distance (there's a sudden chapter that is narrated by someone to Hal later in the book, which felt suddenly out of place), making Hal a little more unknowable.

Two main elements of the novel are Hal's relationships to his father, Henry, and to Harry Percy, family friend turned lover. The blurb suggests these are going to be equally important, positioning the book even as potentially a kind of coming of age romance, but going in expecting that will leave you disappointed. This is a much darker take on Henry IV than retellings tend to be (and the marketing suggests), exploring trauma and abuse and victimhood in quite complex ways, but it does feel like it would be helpful to have any sense going into the book that incest and sexual abuse were going to be so crucial in it, given that they aren't in the original plays. These parts are going to be divisive, especially for people going in for the Hal and Harry Percy romance element or the "queer retelling", and actually getting much more of a focus on an abusive father-son dynamic. For me, it was a surprise because the opening feels like it might be a more straightforward modern retelling and then suddenly you realise it is not at all, and that's certainly an interesting choice.

Henry Henry feels part of a lineage of gay literary fiction, bringing hints of Brideshead (Catholicism) and Dennis Cooper (abuse and addiction) alongside occasional 2015 references to try and prove it isn't actually from an older time. The thing is, I'm still not entirely sure why it is a retelling of Henry IV, and not just a novel about being gay and Catholic and having an abusive father. I might've either preferred it to be more of a retelling, at least in terms of narrative structure as this version is a completely different kind of arc, or less of one, with more experimental prose/character framing or less of a reliance on every single character/family member from the play/history. The ending is an interesting choice that says something about this version of Hal and suits a literary novel about abuse and addiction, but for me, doesn't say enough about the book as a retelling or reworking.

Henry Henry was always going to be a novel I had opinions about, and to be honest I wasn't expecting them to mostly be confusion about how I feel about it as an adaptation and as a novel that should work without knowing the plays. It is an experience to read—it's well-written and it brings in a lot of interesting things, as well as darkly comic images of Hal's life—but it left me frustrated, that it is being marketed as something very different and that it doesn't always seem to know its own relationship with Shakespeare's plays. Messed-up, dark gay novels are great, but I think this one would've worked better for me if it also wasn't Henry IV.

tscott907's review against another edition

5.0

Henry Henry was my most anticipated read of the year so far and it did not disappoint me. A startling, emotional, and strangely funny book that I absolutely loved. Ironically excellent Easter reading and I’m already frothing at the mouth for what’s next from Allen Bratton! Loved, highly recommend, will probably reread sometime in the next six months…

amywoolsey_93's review against another edition

3.0

challenging emotional funny slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I enjoyed the social satire of Henry Henry more than the family/coming-of-age story. Hal's many siblings have as many dimensions as the text messages they constantly send each other, with only Philippa given a cursory (and pretty stereotypical) arc; the characterization of the three brothers is so vague that I never bothered trying to keep track of who was who. One could argue this is a reflection of Hal's self-absorption, but the third-person narration keeps enough of a distance that we're always at least tangentially aware of the world beyond him. By denying the supporting characters inner lives, the book basically reinforces his self-absorption, confirming that every conflict revolves around him. Also, given the connection to Shakespeare, I feel like there needed to be *some* drama or major change at the end.

There's one confrontation, but it sort of dissipates into a long denoucement, and then no one dies.

Still, as a throwback to Gilded/Jazz Age class commentaries, this hits the mark. Bratton crafts insults with a jewel-cutter's precision and layers on so many themes (the hypocrisy of Catholicism, the rotten legacy of British monarchy and imperialism, the malleabiity of identity) while maintaining a sense of fizzy irony. The prose itself is excellent, rich with descriptive detail and scintillating dialogue. While I don't think Henry Henry is an entirely successful debut, it's undeniably an admirable one.

Content Warnings

lilacslasting's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional funny reflective sad 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: Complicated

As Hal Lancaster is seemingly sleeping his way through London, getting high, causing trouble and ruining the good reputation of his family name, but there is a deeper more twisted explanation for his self destruction. With a front row seat to this endless party, Henry Henry is a year in the life of the next Duke of Lancaster, cocaine fulled benders followed by guilt ridden mass, a father whose love is both sparse and menacing, and a 'boyfriend' he can't commit to.

Where there is champagne on tap and credit cards that never seem to run dry, there is vomit drying in the cracks of floorboards and blood filled snotty tissues rotting in bathroom sinks. In the quiet religion of tradition there is unspeakable violence. Where there is silk and velvet and gold and diamonds, there is illness and unholy suffering. The decadence of privilege is pressed so tightly against the oppression of its citizens. Making this novel simultaneously suffocating and mesmerising.

Although unlikable, the real charm of Hal is that he is so very genuine. He is frustrating, but forgivable.
Everything he does is in aid of his own destruction, even if perfectly disguised as privileged selfishness. He is mean, and arrogant, and cruel, but he is real. And the glimmer of this novel is never dulled by its harsh realities, but instead elevated by its bright and clarifying moments.

The callbire of Allen Bratton's debut novel is that of a classic masterpiece. His prose like velvet, each line all-consuming. Inspired by the Henriad, but ultimately a wholy unique and beautifully troubling novel. I could not put it down for even a second, it's haunting protagonist and his seemingly catastrophic descent was as addictive as it was offputting. I could not tear my eyes away from it's mesmirsingly grotesque sparkle.

Thank you to Unnamed Press for sending me a proof copy of this brilliant book.