Henry Henry
‘Needs to be read right now’ Brandon Taylor
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
*2025 Lammy Award Finalist*
'The best modern re-telling of Shakespeare since She's The Man' Jack Edwards, Esquire
'Very funny... Its deeply felt pages flew by' GUARDIAN
'Sexy, compassionate, uncommonly imaginative: I've never read anything quite like it' Oisín McKenna, author of Evenings and Weekends
London, 2014. Hal Lancaster – twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card – is the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster. Henry is half tyrant, half martyr, with an investment in his eldest son that has grown into an obsession. While Hal floats between internships and drinking sessions, Henry keeps him in check with passive-aggression, religious guilt, and a cruelty that Hal sometimes confuses for tenderness.
When a grouse shooting accident – funny in retrospect – makes a romance out of Hal’s rivalry with fumblingly leftist family friend Harry Percy, Hal finds that he wants, for the first time, a life of his own. But his father Henry is an Englishman: he will not let his son escape tradition. To save himself, Hal must reckon not only with grief and shame but with the wounds of his family's past.
'Deeply enjoyable' Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea
'Thrillingly imaginative' Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time
'One of the most exciting new novels' FINANCIAL TIMES
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bratton unpacks the strife of an English aristocratic family in his darkly witty debut. Hal Lancaster, the eldest of six siblings, is fueled by alcohol, drugs, and sex. He's also set to be the 17th (and third gay) Duke of Lancaster. The other two queer Lancasters who assumed the title met tragic ends. Languishing through life, Hal faces immense pressure from his widowed hypochondriac father, Henry, who inherited his title in 1990 after his cousin died due to complications of AIDS (the other gay Lancaster was Hal's great-great-grandfather, who went into exile in 1910 after becoming the subject of a sex scandal with another man). Henry wants Hal to uphold the Catholic family's reputation and not become another source of shame. On top of societal expectations and homophobic and religious scrutiny, Hal has also been sexually abused by his father since he was 14. As Henry plans a marriage of convenience for himself and Hal begins dating Harry Percy, whose family is socially intertwined with his own, Hal's relationship with his father reaches a boiling point. Hal gains a newfound sense of agency as he wriggles out from underneath Henry's thumb and attempts to connect with his family's queer history. It's a harrowing chronicle of survival and healing from generational trauma.
