A review by mmccombs
Henry Henry by Allen Bratton

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.5

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!
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