Henry Henry
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- $37.99
Publisher Description
LAUGH NOW. CRY LATER.
"Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere..."
It’s London, 2014, and Hal Lancaster, son and heir of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, is in a holding pattern: his mother is dead, his father is dying or remarrying or both, his siblings are fighting, his internship is pointless, and nobody will leave him alone.
Everything is as it should be and yet nothing is right. Over the course of a year of partying, drinking, and flirting to dubious consequence, Hal is tested by brutal family legacies, Catholic guilt, and the terrifying possibility of being loved. All of which is complicated by a pattern of abuse that threatens to chase Hal into adulthood. The House of Lancaster will never be the same.
Crackling with intelligence and wit, Henry Henry is a brilliant recasting of the Henriad in which Hal Lancaster is a queer protagonist for a new era. Allen Bratton arrives as a successor to Waugh and St. Aubyn with this lush, stylish novel of family, legacy, and what it means to be alive today.
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.
