Nova Scotia House
A Novel
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- $139.00
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- $139.00
Descripción editorial
FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY PRIZE 2026
A FOYLES AND GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE
‘A work of genius’ Philip Hoare
‘One of the best things I’ve read in many many years’ Hilton Als
'Beautifully provocative' Eimear McBride
A story of loss and grief, sex and love, and refusing to relinquish dreams
He said he would understand if it was too much for me, that I could leave him, that I was young, I should be living, I said to him, I am living.
Johnny Grant faces stark life decisions. Seeking answers, he looks back to his relationship with Jerry Field. When they met, nearly thirty years ago, Johnny was 19, Jerry was 45. They fell in love and made a life on their own terms in Jerry’s flat: 1, Nova Scotia House. Johnny is still there today – but Jerry is gone, and so is the world they knew.
As Johnny’s mind travels between then and now, he begins to remember stories of Jerry’s youth: of experiments in living; of radical philosophies; of the many possibilities of love, sex and friendship before the AIDS crisis devastated the queer community. Slowly, he realizes what he must do next—and attempts to restore ways of being that could be lost forever.
Nova Scotia House takes us to the heart of a relationship, a community and an era. It is both a love story and a lament; bearing witness to the enduring pain of the AIDS pandemic and honouring the joys and creativity of queer life. Intimate, visionary, and profoundly original, it marks the debut of a vibrant new voice in contemporary fiction, and a writer with a liberating new story to tell.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Curator and fashion critic Porter (What Artists Wear) turns to fiction with a melancholy love story about two generations of gay men. Twenty-four years after the death of Johnny Grant's lover, the artist Jerry Field, from AIDS, Johnny is still unable to move forward. He aimlessly wanders the same London streets and lives in the same public housing flat, chasing intimacy in a string of meaningless hookups, and his stream of consciousness narration flows back to his student years in 1990s London, when, at 19, he met Jerry, then 45. Their 16 months together were "everything" to Johnny. Now that Johnny has reached Jerry's age when Jerry died, his memories of the pair's loving relationship and Jerry's decline feel particularly poignant. Driving the narrative is Johnny's need to find closure by recognizing the depth of devastation wrought by AIDS, which culminates with his visit to the U.K. AIDS Memorial Quilt. Porter effectively renders his protagonist's slow progress in stylized prose, reflecting the cyclical rhythms of Johnny's thoughts and patterns ("The quilt is on display again it's the second time they've put it on display since they got it out of storage the first time I couldn't go I just couldn't go"). It's a moving story of a man's reckoning with an impossible grief.
