HUGH

A young man in 18th-century Britain successively falls for, and must choose between, three different men in this debut historical novel.

Charming, fashionable, erudite, and gay Englishman Hugh Entwistle is portrayed as an ideal man of the 18th century in this novel, which is, in part, an homage to coming-of-age novels of the era in which it’s set, such as Henry Fielding’s 1749 classic Tom Jones. It’s also a work of queer historical archiving that’s as admirable and remarkable as its hero. The preface sets up the conceit that the novel is a period document, a fiction penned by the author’s ancestor about a gay hero; the setup is a great authorly salute to similar openings from past classics, in which the author claims to have stumbled upon a “rusted trunk” with “no lock,” and, lo and behold, the manuscript is found. Novelist Lawrence continues this ruse with fidelity, writing in a facsimile Georgian style, which is the novel’s great achievement and, at times, its great pitfall. Juicy, “Dear Reader” asides establish an air of close confidence as the novel explores the secret gay romances of Hugh and his suitors—the alliterative trio of Bramble, Benjamin, and Brent. Yet there’s a degree to which the style, and the plot itself, get a bit confusing. Scaffolding the novel, as if to mirror the life of the protagonist, is a political history of the radical parliamentarian John Wilkes, which doesn’t seamlessly combine with the story of Hugh’s courting and being courted; likewise, period details of aesthetic philosophy, and particularly philosopher Edmund Burke’s writing on the “sublime,” feel overwrought and even somewhat haughty. More frustrating is the fact that sublime is too narrowly defined as “pleasure at the relief from Pain,” which doesn’t quite capture the scope of Burke’s imagination. Nonetheless, the developing, homoerotic love stories, a snappy courtroom scene, and a delightful final image tilt the scales of the novel closer to pleasure than pain.

A noble and ambitious attempt to fuse genre pastiche with queer narratives but one that sometimes fails to connect its disparate details.