A review by divineauthor
Henry Henry by Allen Bratton

challenging dark emotional

4.0

“Maybe I’m just my father, and he’s just his father, and on and on, all the way back to Adam, so no one has ever really died, and no one has ever really lived.” —Hal Lancaster, page 266

i must admit, i’m not well-versed in shakespeare’s HENRIAD, so the modern retelling of it all eludes me, but it did make me slightly more inclined to read some of the plays, so maybe this is a win for bratton. 

okay, so in the most normal way i can put this without sounding like an absolute freak, the on-page incest between hal and his father, henry, isn’t . . . as bad as i expected? it’s vile and immoral, yes, but the way bratton writes makes all their actions so inert which is so interesting because most of this book is a close third person pov on hal, and to be so distanced from him even when he’s being violated shows such a great sense of dissociation. a removal of oneself because, to hal, there is no self. there is a mirror, a reflection. a father, a father’s father, and so on. and, you know, bratton’s prose is actually one of the most fascinating parts of the novel to me. there’s this moshfegh-esque flagrancy to the diction: sensory experiences heightened to the point of past bearing.

anyway, i do think people should read more things that challenge them in ways that goes against their bounds of comfort. read this, or don’t! i wouldn’t say i “enjoyed” this novel, but i was moved by it. all right, love and light, guys!