The New Life
Winner of The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2024
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3.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The Sunday Times Novel of the Year
London, 1894. John and Henry have a vision for a new way of life. But as the Oscar Wilde trial ignites public outcry, everything they long for could be under threat.
'Beautifully written' Graham Norton
'Subtle, sexy and beautifully crafted' Sarah Waters
'Lavishly imagined' Sunday Times
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After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John has finally found a man who returns his feelings. Meanwhile, Henry is convinced that his new unconventional marriage will bring freedom.
United by a shared vision, they begin work on a revolutionary book arguing for the legalisation of homosexuality.
Before it can be published however, Oscar Wilde is arrested and their daring book threatens to throw them, and all around them, into danger. How high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living?
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'A very fine new writer' Kate Atkinson
'I loved this book' Zadie Smith
'Some of the best writing on desire I've read' Douglas Stuart
'A fascinating story, so confidently told, with thoroughly real characters and agonising moral compromises. Brilliant!' Clare Chambers
'Filled with nuance and tenderness . . . charting the lives of men and women who inspired not only political progress but an entire new way of living and loving' Colm Tóibín
Winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
Shortlist, Debut Fiction, 2023 Nero Book Awards
Shortlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This auspicious debut from British author Crewe excavates the oppression and criminal punishment of gay men in 1890s England. Set in London, the story depicts a collaboration between wealthy author John Addington, 49, and physician/essayist Henry Ellis, 30, on a book about the taboo subject of homosexuality. John and his wife are sexually estranged, and he brings his lover, Frank, 28, to live in his family house. Henry has an unconsummated marriage with Edith, who lives separately with her female lover. John's and Henry's completed study, Sexual Inversion, is full of anonymous case studies and testimonials, and it amounts to an argument for sexual freedom for gay men. Their decision to publish, especially so close to Oscar Wilde's highly publicized conviction for a same-sex affair, has far-reaching ramifications for John. The work, though, goes largely unnoticed until a London bookseller, who is being spied on for having radical beliefs, is arrested for selling the book, which, according to the charges, is "lewd, wicked, bawdy, scandalous, and obscene libel." As the bookseller's trial approaches, John's family life implodes; he becomes reckless, and his behavior panics Henry, who makes a decision that influences the trial. Crewe uses meticulously researched period details to great effect, and rounds out the narrative with solid characters and tight pacing. Readers will look forward to seeing what this talented author does next.
Customer Reviews
Queer as old folk
The author is British. He has a PhD in nineteenth century British history from Cambridge and works as an editor at the London Review of Books. This is his first novel.
The book is set in London in the mid-1890s, around the time of Oscar Wilde’s trial for “the love that dare not speak its name.” The protagonists John Addington and Henry Ellis are thinly veiled avatars for real historical figures John Addington Symonds and Henry Havelock Ellis.
Havelock Ellis taught school in Australia for a while, returned to London to study medicine, which he graduated but never practised, and devoted much of his life to researching and writing about (considerably more of the latter than the former) human sexuality. He introduced the terms narcissism and autoeroticism later embraced by psychoanalysts, and wrote about a number sexual practices and inclinations including transgender psychology. The first textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897 was co-written by Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds, a literary critic who published the book (in Germany originally). Havelock Ellis was also a progressive social reformer and member of The Fellowship of The New Life, a group of utopian thinkers included such luminaries as Bernard Shaw, and was a precursor to the Fabian Society and thus, ultimately, to the British Labour Party.
Here, John Addington is married with three children when he falls in love with a young man named Frank and discovers his true identity. Meanwhile, Henry Ellis is straight and enters an unconsummated marriage with Edith, who has a female lover. I’m not sure about Havelock Ellis’s sexuality, but his wife Edith had a female lover too. However, this is not a biographical novel. John Addington Symonds was already dead by the time of the events described, and (thankfully) Henry Ellis does not share Havelock Ellis’s interest in eugenics.
The prose is rich, at times overly so. The book started well but started to drag (sorry, poor choice of words) for me about a third of the way in. The alternating third person narratives from the POVs of each protagonist allows the author to explore the dilemma of Victorian era gay men behaving in typically upper crust restrained English fashion. Mind you, when they let their hair down, things get steamy mighty quick. Consider yourself warned.