The House on Brooke Street

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant wrtng.; psychologically real portrait of gay char.
Review: Bartlett has made huge literary leaps and bounds since "Ready to Catch Him." "The House on Brooke Street" (called "Mr. Clive & Mr. Page" in the UK) is a psychologically realistic first-person account of a homosexual man in early 20th century London trying to exist with English dignity while fulfilling his "unspeakably" real-human desires.

A compelling psychological profile emerges starting with an obscure (factual) description of a late Victorian home in central London, which Bartlett cleverly weaves into journal entries (Mr. Page has a huge rhetorical palette), recounted dialogue, and a host of pertinent "real-life" historical tidbits. As the narrator uncovers bits of truth about himself, the reader uncovers the truth about the mysterious and often bizarre events of the story. For Bartlett, the truth is evasive and only partially attainable: the facts don't always add up, the narrator's judgements often conflict, the lines between fantasy and reality are constantly blurred, both in our world and in the world of the book.

This book means a lot to me personally because it is one of the first fictional works I've read with a "homosexual theme" that simultaneously avoids gratuitous fantasy and delusion while breaking new ground in terms of form and style. I love it because it is absolutely unlike anything I've ever read: you won't find a character like Mr. Page anywhere. Mr. Page is a real homosexual person, not an archetype. I must say, though, that I wasn't really thinking about politics as I was reading, (and Bartlett probably wasn't concerned with such a simple "message" when he wrote it). Any reader, gay or straight, can understand and feel the emotional (or psychological) "action"; anyone can appreciate Bartlett's often ingenious writing.

Zach Victor

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular achievement!
Review: Bartlett has made huge literary leaps and bounds since "Ready to Catch Him." "The House on Brooke Street" (called "Mr. Clive & Mr. Page" in the UK) is a psychologically realistic first-person account of a homosexual man in early 20th century London trying to exist with English dignity while fulfilling his "unspeakably" real-human desires.

A compelling psychological profile emerges starting with an obscure (factual) description of a late Victorian home in central London, which Bartlett cleverly weaves into journal entries (Mr. Page has a huge rhetorical palette), recounted dialogue, and a host of pertinent "real-life" historical tidbits. As the narrator uncovers bits of truth about himself, the reader uncovers the truth about the mysterious and often bizarre events of the story. For Bartlett, the truth is evasive and only partially attainable: the facts don't always add up, the narrator's judgements often conflict, the lines between fantasy and reality are constantly blurred, both in our world and in the world of the book.

This book means a lot to me personally because it is one of the first fictional works I've read with a "homosexual theme" that simultaneously avoids gratuitous fantasy and delusion while breaking new ground in terms of form and style. I love it because it is absolutely unlike anything I've ever read: you won't find a character like Mr. Page anywhere. Mr. Page is a real homosexual person, not an archetype. I must say, though, that I wasn't really thinking about politics as I was reading, (and Bartlett probably wasn't concerned with such a simple "message" when he wrote it). Any reader, gay or straight, can understand and feel the emotional (or psychological) "action"; anyone can appreciate Bartlett's often ingenious writing.

Zach Victor

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Look at Gay Life in the British Fifties
Review: Neil Bartlett's The House on Brooke Street is a wonderfully written look at the repressive 1950's in Britain. It has the erotic charge and the creepy paranoid (with good reason) fear mixed in equal measures to make this novel feel vivid and authentic. The unnamed lead chararcter takes the reader through his encounters and furtive loves through the decades to when he writes it all down in 1956 in a very compulsive manner that is sad and lonely with the thin shadows of anger, rebellion and triumph creeping in on the edges. It is an evocative look at a time but also a look at a time about to change. A very knowing, readable novel.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Look at Gay Life in the British Fifties
Review: Neil Bartlett's The House on Brooke Street is a wonderfully written look at the repressive 1950's in Britain. It has the erotic charge and the creepy paranoid (with good reason) fear mixed in equal measures to make this novel feel vivid and authentic. The unnamed lead chararcter takes the reader through his encounters and furtive loves through the decades to when he writes it all down in 1956 in a very compulsive manner that is sad and lonely with the thin shadows of anger, rebellion and triumph creeping in on the edges. It is an evocative look at a time but also a look at a time about to change. A very knowing, readable novel.

Rating:
Summary: Hidden rooms
Review: Rarely in a book does a narrator thoroughly inhabit the prose as does Mr. Page in The House on Brooke Street. The language is sharply written, whimsical and witty at times, chatty but always laced with a bittersweet tinge that ultimately renders this novel profound, sad, and sorrowful. In a way the story of Mr. Page and Mr. Clive, doppelhanger young gay men in 1920s London, is a classic love story- boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy reminisces about boy thirty years later. But to Mr. Page, and because of the brutal harshness of being gay in those eras of British history, it's more than a love story, it's a mystery which he obsessively mines until he is left as hollow and shaken as ever, and even more haunted. The excessive charm of Mr. Page's honesty- about love, fear, and regret- at times hides the severity of the times he speaks of, but not always. The lifespan of a novel's hold on the imagination of the reader is usually its length, but this one is different. For most readers, I think the image of a young man standing naked on the terrace of Brooke Street will remain in their minds as indelibly it does in Mr. Page's memory.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Sad, Complex and Ultimately Sad Story
Review: The House on Brooke Street covers over thirty years in one man's life in which he obsesses over a lost love -- never actually fully developed -- which he experienced at the age of nineteen. The author offers some excellent detail to this historical story yet ultimately, I had to come away being very saddened at one man's obsession for another for such an incredible period of time. He has spent the better part of his life dwelling over that which has been lost. A House of Regret is not a heatlty place for anyone to live for any length of time -- nevermind thirty-odd years. Interestingly, the book is cleverly written, fairly staid, but intricate enought to keep the reader wanting to know what happens next. Ultimately no role models here, no-one to emulate and I'm really not certain of what the author was attempting to achieve. Not worth the time!

Rating:
Summary: House of Regret
Review: The House on Brooke Street was a sad tale of love lost by uncertainty, or was it fright? A tale of homosexuality in the 1920's, the text is somtimes hard to track, as it is written in the form of journal entrys.

The writer, a department store bookeeper, is sure of his sexual identity, sure of his infatuation with the man of his dreams, yet is crippled by the fear of being discovered in a gay relationship.

I see many similar parables in modern society and those staid ways of the 20's, when often gays were processed as criminals or mental degenerates.

The book is erotic and depressing, all at the same time, and takes extra time to absorb. If you want easy reading, you don't want this book. However, if you have the time to invest in a carefully written, detailed novelette, you will not be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly moving.
Review: This book haunted me for months. It is a novel of grief, and of courage. Its non-linear form may disconcert naive readers, but is ultimately rewarding. It is not a light read, and not a "happy-ever-after," but definitely not depressing. Besides being a love story, and a mystery, it is a vivid reminder of the oppression that for too long has been inflicted on anyone outside the heterosexual majority. Reading this novel reinforced my determination to stand against the Helms of the world. We mustn't let the anti-gay coterie return us to that arid world in which the closet was the only habitable room in the house.

Rating:
Summary: Cumulative History and Psychology, Henry-James Quality.....
Review: You know what I'm going to say don't you Mr Bartlett. That the book glows in memory. As dramatic story. Dead bodies all over, stairs to be climbed, and more. But also the aesthetic-and-the-psychological. Organic form's theme with repetitions all over. The early infatuation appearing, submerging, resurfacing all one's life long....And history too. The days of the cosmic-sized closet, "over now" supposedly right Mr Bartlett, but maybe not so after all. I know about it, growing up across the Pond in the land of the free in the Sixties. Giving that alias. In bars, using the life-facts of a friend instead of yourself, for anonymity. Experiencing the bar and party atmosphere pre-Stonewall--secretive, furtive. And so this book goes on my blue-ribbon shelf of best books ever. The arrow-thrust of Desire all life long wrapping up one's biography....Oh the other novel, the story of Boy and O, also good but more black-and-white, this book here is technicolor swoops and swirls....Because you created "emerging realizations on every page" didn't you Mr Bartlett. Achieving true Literature at last, and I only hope those who can appreciate it, will come to it--if they do, they will....