Boy Friends Explores Male Friendship and..?

 

 

BOY FRIENDS (2022)

By Michael Pedersen

Faber, 232 pages

★★★

 

Have you ever had a best friend to whom you pledged to be besties forever? Someone with whom you were instantly compatible. A person who simply “got you” despite your moods and foibles. Is this person still your BFF? If not, what happened?

 

There are a variety of reasons why good friendships cease. Mostly it’s because one or both people change. Of all the ways to lose a best friend, the worst is if that person dies.. It’s as if your friend was flash frozen. You grow older, but they stay forever young.

 

Note that the title of this book is Boy Friends, not boyfriends. Author Michael Pedersen details previous special friends, but none of them measured up as intensely as Scott Hutchinson (1981-2018). Pedersen is a Scottish poet, spoken word artist, and musician. Hutchinson’s name might be more familiar; he was the founder and guiding spirit of the indie rock band Frightened Rabbit. They made five albums from 2006-15. Hutchinson also recorded with others, briefly soloed (as Owl John), and did the artwork for Frightened Rabbit, other bands, and several of Pedersen’s collections. For eight years, Pedersen and Hutchinson were best mates. On May 9, 2018, Hutchinson was reported missing. The next day his body was discovered in the Firth of Forth, having chosen to end his life by jumping from a bridge.

 

Pedersen’s book is mostly based on diary entries he wrote as he was working through his grief over Scott’s suicide. It’s non-fiction that is a memoir, mixed with a lamentation, cultural history, and a love story. Scott and Michael were simpatico because their childhoods were challenging, each was more shy than they outwardly projected, and they oozed non-conformity. Not many kids dream of being an androgenous poet or a depressed musician and illustrator. They shared a twisted way of looking at the world. For instance, they both were obsessed with the Curfew Tower in Ireland, a 19^th century structure most people see as curious, but not beautiful. Boy Friends catalogs some of the adventures Michael and Scott had while trekking, sharing boyhood memories, writing poetry, and being on the road. Pedersen founded Neu! Reekie!, an arts collective that produced 200 mixed arts shows of poetry, videos, music, and artworks. As you can imagine, Hutchinson and Pedersen partnered in many Neu! Reekie! shows. They also collaborated on Pedersen’s second poetry collection, with Hutchinson illustrating Oyster.

 

Boy Friends is beautifully written, even when it is oblique. Pedersen has an enormous vocabulary and isn’t afraid to use it. He leaves open the question is whether his relationship with Scott was also that of boyfriends. Neither acknowledged being gay or bisexual, but the language suggests that they were occasional lovers. For the record, though, Hutchison’s known relationships and breakup songs concern women and Pedersen’s partner is the comely poet Hollie McNish. Michael clearly loved Scott, but his objective is to show the intensity of men’s friendships. As a poet he has written about queer lives and sometimes waxes so rhapsodic over male bodies that his language evinces the passion that landed Oscar Wilde in jail. I don’t know his work very well, others have said that he obliterates the borders between Platonic and romantic. I can say only that if both engaged only in heterosexual relations, Boy Friends is the gayest straight memoir I’ve ever read.

 

It matters not to me who sleeps with whom. In my judgment Pedersen makes a strong case that men’s friendships can have the intensity of romantic love.* There are many playful moments in Boy Friends, antics that are indeed what a boy might do. There are laugh aloud hijinks and deeply moving passages. However you decode the message, Boy Friends is a tribute and exploration of inner feelings held by men, a seldom-discussed topic.

 

Still, by leaving so much unsaid, Pedersen tempts readers to take a voyeuristic interest in the book rather than a considered one. I wanted to yell out, “Let’s hear it for enduing friendships,” but Pedersen’s florid writing often gets in the way. Moreover, the work is so interiorized that we seldom feel like we are part of the fun. Some have called Pedersen’s prose antiseptic. I don’t agree, but in a book where not much actually happens, it can seem that way.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 * Amusing true story: I once went to Amsterdam with a good male friend. We arrived too early, dropped off our bags, and joked about while discussing what to do for a few hours. When we got to our room, the twin beds were pushed together. 

 

Hamnet is Affecting, but not History

HAMNET (2025)

Directed by Chloé Zhao

Focus Features, 126 minutes, PG-13 (adult situations, hint of nudity)

★★★★

 

You’ve no doubt heard that actress Jesse Buckley won the Golden Globe award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Agnes Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare and the mother of his three children: Susanna, and twins Judith and Hamnet. If you don’t  know, Hamnet was an alternative spelling of Hamlet.

 

Hamnet the film is that is not a biographical study.  It’s a play within a play within a play, though director and Mount Holyoke graduate Chloé Zhao disguises it so well you might assume it’s a historical look at the Shakespeare family. William Shakespeare may be the most famous Westerner of all time about whom we know so little. He is presumed to have written the greatest plays in the English language, but the key word is “presumed.” Anti-Stratfordians do not believe that a man from such a humble background could have written such words and put forth as the real author such properly educated gentlemen as Earl of Oxford Edmund de Vere, Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, King James I, Sir Walter Raleigh, or Christopher Marlowe. Some even claim that Shakespeare was a woman (Countess of Pembroke Mary Sidney, Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Agnes Shakespeare); or perhaps a group of people ranging from known writers to Jesuits or Rosicrucians. Some 88 people have been fingered for what would be the greatest literary fraud in Western history.

 

I’ve no desire to open such debates, though the Anti-Stratfordians could easily be accused of  arrogantly assuming that no one not to the manor born could be a genius. Again, though, we know very little of the historical William Shakespeare beyond his birth in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in 1564 and his death there in 1616. The movie Hamnet, though, focuses on the Bard’s wife, who we used to call “Anne” Hathaway but now believe was named Agnes. When she married in 1582, Agnes was 26 and "Will" (Paul Mescal) was barely 18. Age differences were usually the other way around, but Will’s relative youth would have been unusual at the time.  

 

Hamnet is beautifully acted, with Buckley’s grief one of the rawest and most convincing depictions of abject sorrow I’ve seen in quite a while. Mescal gives us a tortured look at writer’s block, but he and Buckley generate considerable heat of a couple who began married life as passionate lovers. Of the two, Buckley’s character is more complex. Her late mother was rumored to be a forest witch and Agnes didn’t all far from the creepy tree that factors into the story. Agnes is literally a child of nature, with gifts of herbalism, taming hawks, and prognostication though the latter power isn’t always on the money. Her brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn) is her greatest champion and becomes a good friend to Will. (If Alwyn’s name sounds familiar, any female under the age of 30 can tell you he was Taylor Swift’s boyfriend for six years!) David Wilmot and Emily Watson turn in solid performances as Will’s parents, but the children are the anchor of the family tragedy. Susannah (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), the eldest, is her mother’s helpmate and pupil when Will is in London, and the twins (Jacobi Jupe and Olivia Lynes) are so simpatico that when Judith is thought to be dying of bubonic plague, Hamnet sees Death coming, offers his life for hers, and dies in her place. Hamnet’s experience as a shadow portends Hamlet’s in his father’s play, which we see acted out at the Globe Theatre. To add the third level of fiction, though we can assume that Hamnet’s death gutted his parents, the film’s drama comes from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, not historical accounts.

 

Nor do we have any records of Agnes witnessing a staging of Hamlet. If you want to find other inaccuracies, they can be unearthed. It is quite unlikely that Agnes could read or write, let alone each of the children. Hamnet died at age 11, but probably not of the plague as no outbreak was rampant at the time. Screen wipes show the passage of time but the time frames don’t always make sense. Speaking of not making sense, the film doesn’t show Will or Agnes ageing–or Agnes having ever changed her red dress–though a dozen years would have passed before the very affecting emotional climax, which would not have gone down the way it was filmed.

 

All this said, Hamnet is a very good movie. But call it a romantic drama, not history.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

What Will Kill Americans in 2026

 

 

Newest Health Warnings

 

Various health specialists–including those from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Doctors Without Borders, Doctors With Shiny Silver Discs Around Their Necks, and the three people not yet fired at the National Institutes of Health–have issued their annual Report on American health. Here are the top things that will kill Americans in 2026.

 

1. Topping the list is being shot while attempting any sort of conversation with a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. President Donald Tramp has issued a blanket immunity for all I.C.E. officers who have responded with lethal force. Threats include unfriendly stares in supermarkets, signs at places of worship, mothers sitting in their personal vehicles, and homes devoid of MAGA regalia. The presumption is that all I.C.E. personnel are protecting national security and the dead had it coming.

 

2. Measles: Health and Human Experiments Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. is adamant that vaccinations have killed 9 billion Americans in the past week and he’s doing his best to protect the 11 toothless idiots who think vaccinations are dangerous.

 

3. Classroom Slayings: Insisting that people not guns, kill people, President Tramp has ordered mandatory firearms training for all students and school employees. Doctors warn that young kids love bang-bang sounds, that grade schoolers are notoriously poor shots, and by Friday most teachers are ready to murder someone. They further warn that support and janitorial staff are very likely to frag principals, supervisors, payroll managers, and kids that walk over freshly washed floors.

 

4. Mumps: See Two above.

 

5. Combat Deaths: President Tramp is furious he didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize and has announced plans to declare a Fourth Reich to foist “peace” on the rest of the world. This will involve forced conscription, as an anonymous Tramp D.O.D. official reported that he was “furious” that the U.S. military’s 1.3 million armed personnel were unable to subdue and attack force of four kayakers and a dozen spear fishermen during America’s aborted assault on Greenland. Tramp also announced plans to invade Malta, Gibraltar, Lichtenstein, Andora, and Kiribati as phase one of building the Reich. Some of those countries are alleged to be supplied with robust sticks and “big honking rocks.”

 

6. Hair Dye Poisoning: President Tramp has decreed that all American women will be required to be blonde. Given that Tramp has already dismantled “needless regulations,” doctors warn that several million MAGA women won’t be smart enough to figure out that they are not supposed to drink the hair dye.

 

7. Pogroms: Tramp has proposed a “culling of the herd” hunting season against all Leftists. Details are still being formulated but leaks to the “failing New York Times”  (circulation 11.8 million) claim that the following U.S. citizens are “hiding behind the failing U.S. Constitution” and hence subject to culling: people of color, children born in the U.S. to non-citizens, naturalized citizens who break any law (including littering), non-beef eaters, abortionists, women not wearing government-issued red cloaks, non-Christians, and “radical insurrectionists.” The last group will include: anyone to the left of Stephan Miller, Muslims, non-Republican Jews, anyone wearing Birkenstocks, Californians, Greenpeace supporters, New Englanders, “Save the Whales” communists, and non-heterosexuals. 

 

8. Being pressed to death: In his zealous quest to sleep with more women than Bill Clinton, President Tramp intends to classify any women having intercourse (consensual or forced) with him and complaining about it as a “lying b……s” and subject to the death penalty. Execution will involve Tramp lying atop their naked bodies until they suffocate.

 

9. Death by right-wing shooters, car drivers, and tactical bombers who are in the act of standing their ground and/or protecting the president from “leftists” (see 7 above). Subsections protect patriotic vigilantes who are: engaging in target practice along U.S. borders, are forced to self-protect during “peaceful demonstrations” inside the U.S. Capitol, are being harassed by Black trick-or-treaters, heathens holding placards asserting that Charlie Kirk was a fraud, and leftists whose heckling hurts their feelings.

 

10. Whopping cough, polio, COVID, and 5,000 other preventable diseases such as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Bubonic plague, TB, diphtheria, RSV, monkey pox, chickenpox, flu, or failing to own a gun.  (See Two and Nine above.)

 

 

 

Michael Connelly, Jess Walter, Charlotte Wood, T.J. Klune, Steven Wright

 

 This week I’ve featured John Irving’s new novel and an older one from Mark Haddon. Here’s a book clean-out in short review form. One must move some books out to make room for others!

 

Mysteries Solved:

 

 I enjoy mysteries, cozy and not. Now that I’ve exhausted most of the Robert Parker collection, Michael Connelly has replaced him as my go-to read. I quite enjoyed The Drop (2011, 387 pages). This is a Harry Bosch novel whose very title involves a twist. Harry has been an LAPD homicide detective for many years about to retire. He’s not on active cases because he’s in the transitional Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) for four years. To keep him out of trouble he’s in the Open-Unsolved unit that looks at cold cases to see if they should be reopened using new methods. Harry is looking into a murder/rape from 1989 and discovers that the now 29-year-old man convicted of the crime was just 8 years old when sent to adult court. Harry smells corruption. At the same time, Harry is handed a new case. The son of City Councilman Irvin Irving is found dead outside a fancy hotel. Irving was once a cop who disliked Harry and now has the power to cut funding for DROP. Shockingly, Irving demands that Harry investigate his son’s demise; he hates Harry, but trusts him to ferret out the truth. Did his son jump or was he dropped from above? Irving is furious when Harry works both cases at once and also finds some time for romance. Not to mention Harry’s deep dive into feuding taxi cab companies.

 

I also enjoyed Connelly’s The Night Fire (2019,  456 pages). This Bosch novel also includes LAPD Renée Ballard, who is new school to Harry’s old school methods. Ballard lives in her car and has been demoted to the graveyard shift after accusing a superior of sexual harassment. She’s tough and fearless, which is exactly what scares Bosch. Renée hangs out in an unsavory neighborhood and is investigating possible homicide when a homeless man dies in a tent fire. For his part, Harry has been given a murder book by the widow of a deceased cop friend. Why? To complicate things further, a judge is stabbed to death in broad daylight in a public park. There is DNA evidence linking a young man arrested for the judge’s murder. He is being defended by Mickey Haller, who knows Harry. Is there a connection between the judge, the fire, and a long ago murder? Get the feeling something much bigger is at play?     

 

 

Inspires: 

Jess Walter is an author who seeks unique ways to tell a story. In his dark satirical novel The Financial Life of the Poets Walter takes potshots at the 2007-09 housing market collapse and financial crisis. The Arizona Republic cogently summed it as a novel that “would be sad if it weren’t so funny and so funny it if weren’t so sad.” At age 46, Matt Prior is living the middle-class dream: a nice house, a lovely wife (Lisa), and two boys. He’s also typical in that he’s leveraged up to his eyeteeth, his kids are struggling in school, and Lisa’s e-Bay business is tanking. Matt foresees the decline of newspapers, but makes the first of a series of bad choices by quitting his job and launching a Website dispensing financial advice in the form of blank verse (no ending rhymes). Who wants a haiku on adjustable mortgages or stock advice in the form of a sonnet? No one. When the excrement hits the air circulation device, Matt is so broke that he needs to raise $30,000 in seven days or he will lose his house. His senile father is no help; he was bilked by a Las Vegas stripper! Matt is wallowing in so much desperation that when he meets a group of young guys of questionable character at the local 7-Eleven he ends up smoking powerful dope with them and surrendering his favorite slippers!  Soon, Matt wants to buy more pot to sell. Not the best idea as it’s illegal, plus there are some serious bad guys who are all about turf. Soon, Matt is the verge of losing his marriage as well, as Lisa seems to be having a Facebook affair with an old flame. (Not that her decisions are any better.) Will the Priors join those families that went down in flames? This is a satire in which you laugh and say “ouch!”

 

 

 

Don’t laugh, but I learned about Stoneyard Devotional (2023, 291 pages) from Sarah Jessica Parker. She’s a serious reader who has served on Booker Prize committees. This novel from Australian author Charlotte Wood was shortlisted for a 2024 Booker. I might have voted for Wood for her skill in compiling a short novel that feels like non-fiction. An unnamed middle-aged burn-out case leaves Sydney to rejuvenate at a rural monastery. She never returns, though she’s neither a believer nor a member of the Catholic Church. She is attracted by the routine and the relative silence. Wood’s novel is  akin to opening a detailed diary recounting the three big crises of her time there. The first is the nunnery’s mouse infestation, by which I mean so many mice that trenches are dug for three-a-day rodent burials. The second rocks the nuns as word arrives of the discovery of Sister Jenny’s bones, who disappeared in Thailand years before. She may have drowned or have been murdered. It sets off a bout of jealousy; Sister Bonaventure was Jenny’s friend but others have been in charge of what to do about a burial. The bones come back to the monastery via Helen Parry, an activist nun who is a world celebrity. She’s a bit like a cross between Greta Thunberg and Nurse Ratched, but she stimulates old memories in our narrator who was once a school mate. Seldom have I read a book that is so inwardly judgmental yet so calm.  

 

Misfires:

 

 

If I were a young gay or trans person, I’d probably love the latest T. J. Klune novel Somewhere Beyond the Sea ( 2025, 416 pages.) Klune writes fantasy novels in which the LGBTI + community takes center stage. My problem is that each of his books has the same story: the prejudice facing those of non-normative sexuality and how love overcomes adversity. Klune novels are easy reads and this is the fifth I’ve perused, but I think I’m done. This is a sequel to Klune’s heralded 2020 House in the Cerulean Sea, which could stand as a sort of Harry Potter for gay folks. This one takes us back to Marsyas Island where Linus Baker and his partner Arthur Parnassus run a home for troubled magical children: Lucifer, Chauncey (a blob), Talia (a bearded female gnome), Theodore (a wyvern) Phee (a sprite), Sal (a were-cat), and new resident David (a Yeti). Jeanine Rowley is the new head of the Department of Magical Youth (DICOMY) and wishes to close down the orphanage because the resident “children” are too “dangerous,” especially Satan’s son Lucifer. It is far too easy to figure out that each character is a stand-in for something else; Rowley represents the intolerant political right, Marsyas and environs are a sanctuary city, Lucy is a victim of labeling, Sal is so big that no one thinks he’s a kid, etc. Klune has already made most of these points in Book One, so he tries to hinge the book on property ownership and crown it with a syrupy wedding. It feels (and is) lightweight. 

 

 

 

If you asked me to identify my favorite living comedian, I’d pick Steven Wright. I love his surrealistic humor, his wry/dry delivery, the brevity of his stories, and his hilarious punchlines. As in music, often a performer is much sharper live than on a record.  Wright’s novel Harold (2024, 256 pages) is an example of this in comedy. Harold is an offbeat seven-year-old who might be high-functioning autistic. He’s clearly bright but experiences the sensation of birds flying into his head whenever he contemplates somethings and deposits Harold in surreal places. The book covers a single day of Harold’s school- and family-life. Harold, like his creator, takes us to some seriously odd places, but I seldom guffawed because what works on the stage didn’t translate on the page.

 

Rob Weir

 

The Red House: Can This Famiy Be Salvaged?

 

 

THE RED HOUSE (2012)

By Mark Haddon

Doubleday, 264 pages.

★★★★

 

You might recognize the name Mark Haddon as the author of the brilliant book and play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The Red House is what he wrote next. It’s not quite the masterpiece of Dog in the Night-Time, but it’s an intriguing novel. Once again Haddon investigates both spoken and perceived thoughts.

 

The Red House follows the trials of an estranged brother and sister who reconnoiter at their mother’s funeral. Based on that sad gathering, eldest brother Richard, an upwardly mobile doctor rents a cottage in Herefordshire on the Welsh border near Hay-on-Wye. The idea is to repair family ties over the course of a week. Good luck with that, as the two families are like chalk and cheese. Richard, a divorcee, has recently remarried. Along with his sexy wife, Louisa, he inherits a stepdaughter, Melissa, a spoiled flirtatious 16 year-old. She’s like something out of Mean Girls.

 

Richard’s sister, Angela, is married to Dominic who has recently lost his job and has been reduced to a sales position at Waterstones (a British bookstore chain). His economic tumble reduces his family to downwardly mobile members of the upper lower class. Angela was once a looker, but after four births she’s on the chunky side, which is nothing compared to being seriously depressed since she lost a stillborn daughter 18 years earlier and can’t shake her blues. Their three living children are 17-year-old Alex, who is part good guy and part horny high schooler; Daisy, 16, who has fallen in with a fundamentalist Christian group; and adorable, but detached, eight-year-old Benji, who often disappears into fantasies and fantasy games.

 

Needless to say, the class divide comes into play, symbolized by the gap between Richard’s shiny Mercedes and Dominic’s old family clunker that he hopes will make it to Herefordshire. On a deeper level, Richard assumes a leadership role as he’s paying for the vacation, though he’s blind and deaf to Dominic’s feelings of inferiority. When the two attempt to bond over beer and outdoor grilling, Richard mainly sees Dominic as a “bloke,” which isn’t a good thing. Dominic thinks Richard is an ineffectual father to Melissa and he is. Melissa is as difficult as she can be, a vocal vegetarian, a foul-mouthed kid, selfish, and prone to doing whatever she wants whenever she wishes. In like fashion, though, everyone thinks Daisy has been brainwashed.

 

It is, nonetheless, a revelatory week. When push comes to shove, each of the characters becomes aware of which of their impulses sustains them and which are destructive. Richard, for example, discovers that he needs to build a relationship with Louisa rather than merely being bedazzled by her looks. The fact that Dominic seems to be flirting with Louisa is one reason, but he also realizes that having a mistress on the side means he can’t be fully in a relationship with his wife. That might seem obvious, but each character in his or her own way needs to learn to be more mature. Daisy has a sexuality crisis of faith and her mother begins to see her children for who they are rather than Karen, the lost child.

 

One of the triumphs of The Red House is Haddon’s skill in giving personalities to each of his eight major characters, no easy feat in a relatively short novel. To elaborate on the aforementioned use of spoken and perceived thoughts, most of the latter are as if we are inside mind bubbles that quite often illumine what they really think and feel rather than what they carefully say. (For Melissa, it’s the opposite!)

 

I will caution, though, that Haddon’s writing style requires some adjustment time. This is not a novel in which the author signposts who is talking or thinking. Haddon relies on his readers to get to know the characters until they can infer who is talking or contemplating. Benji is the easiest to translate. As precocious as he is, he still inhabits an eight-year old’s world, one that’s a mix of amusing imagination and verbalized fears. It will take you a bit longer with the adult characters, but because each metaphorically has a unique worldview, you’ll catch on. This is my way of saying don’t toss the book aside after 50 or so pages because you feel lost; you are actually feeling the way each character feels. You might even feel sorry for Melissa instead of wanting to slap her!

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Queen Esther: Irving Recyles but Tells a Good Story

 

 

 

QUEEN ESTHER (2025)

By John Irving

Simon and Schuster, 432 pages.

★★★★

 

I was charitable when I reviewed The Last Chairlift in 2023. It was supposed to be the last novel from John Irving. That didn’t turn out to be the case, as late last year he released Queen Esther. It should have been everything I hate: a (semi-) sequel (of The Cider House Rules, 1985) and deals with shopworn themes such as wrestling (every novel since 1973’s 158-Pound Marriage);  small people (A Prayer for Owen Meany, 1985); a male raised by feminists (The World According to Garp, 1978); confused sexual identity (Garp, In One Person, 2012), a lost limb (1981’s The Fourth Hand), and Vienna (every novel since his first, Setting Free the Bears, 1968). Speaking of bears, they are about the only thing in Queen Esther that’s not been recycled (and that includes Irving's fixation on penises). And yet… Queen Esther has its virtues.

 

John Irving might not be an author who goes to great lengths to avoid repetition, nor is he a careful self-editor. (Queen Esther could use both a developmental editor and a veto-proof copy editor.) All of this said, when it comes to storytelling, Irving can plausibly be compared to Charles Dickens. (Dickens also needed editors.)

 

Concerning the book’s title, in the Old Testament, Esther was married to Xerxes, the king of Persia. She was Jewish, but hid her identity. When Mordecai failed to bow lowly enough to satisfy Haman, Xerxes’ top advisor, Haman sought to exterminate the Jews. Esther’s intervention saved them and is the background to the Jewish holiday of Purim.

 

You’re wrong if you think Irving is making a backdoor political statement; he goes through the front door! This novel has been praised in Jewish sources, both because Irving carefully researched Jewish culture and is respectful of Zionism. Through his characters, Zionism is a desire not to be assimilated or persecuted, as well as moral battle to maintain Jewish identity. (Is it a mere coincidence that Haman is just one letter off from being Hamas?)

 

In the novel, three-year-old Esther Nacht (born in 1905) loses both of her parents to anti-Semites. She is sent to St. Cloud, Maine, which fans of Cider House Rules will recognize as the site of an orphanage (and underground abortion clinic) run by Dr. Wilbur Larch. Larch is an ether addict, but a kindly man who quickly realizes Esther as more world- and book-wise than most adults. After settling in, Esther becomes a beloved resident of St. Cloud’s, though the Jewish identity that she embraces is a problem; there just aren’t many Jews in St. Cloud. Larch finally locates a New Hampshire family to adopt Esther when she’s 15. Tommy and Connie Winslow aren’t Jewish, but they despise anti-Semitism, and Esther comes to regard them as her parents and their three daughters as her sisters. When Honor, an unexpected fourth is born, Esther practically raises her. She and Honor eventually share another bond; Honor wants to be a mother but is scared of childbirth and Esther wants to experience pregnancy, but has zero interest in parenting. Thus, a wrestler impregnates Esther and the child, James is given to Honor to raise. As in Garp, “Jimmy” grows up in a houseful of dominant women.  

 

The bulk of the novel is devoted to Jimmy growing up in the 1960s. Esther and Honor persuade him to wrestle in the hope he will suffer an injury that will exempt him from the Vietnam War. He’s fine, but his interest in becoming fluent in German leads him to take his college JYA in Vienna, where he wrestles for exercise. There are two tough Russians who might be able to lame Jimmy, but they become friends rather than manglers. Plan two: If Jimmy can impregnate a woman he could secure a parentship exemption. This part of the novel is long on the ambiance of post-World War II Vienna. (Spoiler: It was gritty rather than elegant.) Jimmy wouldn’t mind losing his virginity to his beautiful tutor, Annaliese Eissler, but she has a more important mission to complete. His roomies in the tawdry boarding house are Claude, a French Jewish student, and Jolanda, a lesbian.

 

Jimmy, like his birth mother Esther, finds himself caught up in a world in which identity and history have imprinted his future. Add a few puppeteers pulling his strings and Jimmy is Garp version II. Some readers have complained that in Irving’s disjointed telling, Esther too often fades into the background. They’re not wrong!

 

Rob Weir

Mrs. Brown: Top Drawer for the Post-Hogmanay Viewing

 

 

 

MRS. BROWN  (1997)

Directed by John Madden

Miramax, 103 minutes, PG

★★★★★

 

New Year’s Day is a holiday, but most people party on New Year’s Eve. Scots certainly do; for them, December 31 is Hogmanay. It roughly means gala day but whether it’s a Scots word, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, or French is up for debate. Today it bears similarities to First Night celebrations, but some places have bonfires, special foods, gift-giving, folk customs, and pipe bands.  

 

It just seemed the right time of the year to rewatch one of my favorite films, Mrs. Brown. I’d not disagree with charges of sentimentality, though I’d counter that it demonstrates how fine acting can carry a film in which relatively little action occurs. One reason why British films are, on the whole, superior to Hollywood movies is that many U.K. actors are classically trained and are hired for their chops, not necessarily their looks. Hollywood creates drama through pyrotechnics, loud music, and over-the-top speeches; British cinema finds drama in human interactions, even if the ”star” is a queen.

 

If you know about the British monarchy, you will have noticed there is a strict protocol for being in the presence of royalty. It prevails, though the monarchy has had no political power since 1689. Royals are to be treated regally and behave as such. You probably also know that little shocks U.K. tabloids as much as a good royal scandal. (Think Lady Diana, Sarah Ferguson’s divorce, and Prince Andrew for starters.) What we learn is that royals aren’t special when it comes to human foibles.

 

Mrs. Brown deals with one of Britain’s most revered monarchs, Queen Victoria (1819-1901). She took the throne weeks after she turned 18, married Albert (her first cousin) when she was 21, had nine children, and was quite happy until Albert died in 1861. We now associate Victorianism with a certain morbidity because the Queen went into mourning for most of the rest of her 63-year reign. When Albert passed, she stayed at Balmoral Castle draped in mourning gear and out of sight for two years. That was not a good thing for two powerful political figures vying for the prime minister’s chair in Parliament, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. As we see in Mrs. Brown, Disraeli (Antony Sher) and his party are sinking in popularity and hope to lure Victoria (Judi Dench) out of mourning to boost Disraeli’s electoral chances.

 

The question is how to get Victoria out of Balmoral Castle in Scotland and back to London’s Buckingham Palace where she can regularly wave to the citizenry. Enter John Brown (Billy Connolly), a former soldier who was once Albert’s ghillie (a gamekeeper).  He is called to Balmoral is to get Victoria to go riding and recover her health so that her closest advisors, Henry Ponsonby (Geoffrey Palmer), Dr. Jenner (Richard Pasco), and her son “Bertie,” the Prince of Wales (David Westhead) can convince Victoria to leave Scotland. (As the English often felt, they hated it there.) Problem: John  Brown was loyal to the queen but not to the toffs surrounding her. Brown reveled in being a rugged Scot who liked tweaking upper-class snobs. A bigger problem: Victoria adored Scotland and Brown. The film correctly infers that the two of them may have been intimate. There was also a rumor that they secretly married, hence the film’s title. (Recent evidence has revived that possibility.)

 

Mrs. Brown is also a story of intrigue and of hubris. As Brown’s star rose at Balmoral, his plotters sought ways to discredit him. Victoria is persuaded to make a triumphant return to London and, for a time, Brown’s ego got in the way and he was out of favor. Still, Victoria refused to dismiss him. He was head of security in 1893, when he died (not of pneumonia as in the film, but of a bacterial infection).

 

What a stroke of genius to cast Connolly as Brown. Billy Connolly is a seriously funny man who is far more coarse and irreverent in real life, just as Dench could herself be. I could go on about the crackerjack acting of this film, including Sher’s wiliness and Gerard Butler’s first role as Brown’s brother. The takeaway is the same; fill the screen with superb actors and let them metaphorically play winner-take-all chess. It was a surprise hit in 1997 and won numerous prizes despite being stiffed at the Academy Awards. Wha’ a bunch o’ glakits!

 

Rob Weir