Customer Reviews

The House on Brooke Street

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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

Neil Bartlett achieves the power to hypnotise the reader with this book. If your ideal reading experience is one where the book makes you forget where you are and what time it is,buy this book. It is almost impossible to describe the effect of reading "The House on Brooke Street" (published also under the alternative title "Mr Clive and Mr Page"). The diary extracts of the male protaganist, Mr Page, a lower class shop worker in 1950's London, flicker back and forth between his middle-aged present and his youthful encounter with Mr Clive, an upper class toff, and evoke the loneliness, repression,discrimination and class that almost extinguish Mr Page's humanity. Mr Page's stubborn survival is a triumph, as is this book.

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.

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....

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.

On the strength of his first novel, Ready To Cath Him Should He Fall, I was excited to read Brooke Street. In the end, I was not disappointed. However, the narrative is so jumbled that it takes quite some time to become comfortable with the time period in which each chapter occurs and who the characters are. Just suffer through. It does become clear and it does have merit. Ostensibly the story of a 30 year "relationship" between two men, it is more correctly described as an extended coming-of-age novel in a time very different than today -- London in the 1950s. The furtive nature of courtship, the deeply closeted gay society, the constant fear of exposure at first seem quite distant. But the toll that they take on the characters are easy for many who grew up in the 70s, 80s and even 90s to relate to. Brooke Street brings to mind the kinds of insights and understanding delivered in Alan Hollinghurst's "The Swimming-Pool Library." Bartlett has written a book of basic truths, wrapping them around a fascinating love story, plus, for those who are intigued by grand turn-of-the-century homes, a tour of the Brooke Street House that makes it come alive every bit as much as the emotions of the characters passing through it.

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.

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.

Perhaps noone writes about the gay milieuex of London as well as Neil Bartlett. To date, no one has reveled in or revealed the hidden gay histories of the city as deeply as he has. However, following the deserved credits for 'Ready to catch him...' and 'Who was that Man' Bartlett's most recent excursion was, in this reader's opinion, as rambling and incoherently maudling as it was ill conceived and poorly executed. The, by now, habitual vocal mannerisms of shrill suburban hysteria were all on painful display (think Kenneth Williams twinned with Maggie Smith meets Mike Leigh in a bath house). Anyone who has seen one of Neil Bartlett's stage productions in London will recognise the operatic performance voice in full throttle which reappears increasingly in his fiction. Unfortunately, the bravura of his stage work - and the very real comedy of it - does not translate easily onto the page. The result is a rambling mish mash of nasal Cockney sentimentality strained through a pastiche of pale effects borrowed from other writers (when is he going to let go of his obsessions with Wilde?) undermined still further by little or no attempt to create any coherent structure. The result is a self indulgent mess of a novel which, if it had come from any other writer, would probably have been treated with well deserved critical silence. If you want to read a real act of gay psychological mimesis read John Banville's 'The Untouchable'. As it is we are expected to pay respects to Bartlett's radical gay literary voice - which on current form cannot write.