Michael
A Room Above a Shop is a novel about tenderness, true love, yearning, and fear.
B and M live in small town Wales in the 1980s. They are gay in a time and place where that was considered disgusting, evil, etc., etc. They find each other by chance and fall in love. They have no way to declare their love to the world, but in their “room above [M’s] shop” they carefully build a life together. This room is their refuge.
The ending is heartbreaking.
Anthony Shapland writes in sparse, spare prose. It is almost like poetry. There is much left unsaid in his prose, but despite this we know what is unsaid.
“He learned the things he needed to like. If he got the wrong ear pierced…if he looked at his finger-nails the wrong way…”. I grew up in Tennessee and not small-town Wales, but I still remember trying to remember which ear was the correct ear to be pierced or how to look at my fingernails the right way. The fear of getting it wrong and that people would know.
This short, poetic novel about yearning and love (and fear) is wonderful.
However, the next gay novel I read will have a happy ending.
A Room Above a Shop is a novel about tenderness, true love, yearning, and fear.
B and M live in small town Wales in the 1980s. They are gay in a time and place where that was considered disgusting, evil, etc., etc. They find each other by chance and fall in love. They have no way to declare their love to the world, but in their “room above [M’s] shop” they carefully build a life together. This room is their refuge.
The ending is heartbreaking.
Anthony Shapland writes in sparse, spare prose. It is almost like poetry. There is much left unsaid in his prose, but despite this we know what is unsaid.
“He learned the things he needed to like. If he got the wrong ear pierced…if he looked at his finger-nails the wrong way…”. I grew up in Tennessee and not small-town Wales, but I still remember trying to remember which ear was the correct ear to be pierced or how to look at my fingernails the right way. The fear of getting it wrong and that people would know.
This short, poetic novel about yearning and love (and fear) is wonderful.
However, the next gay novel I read will have a happy ending.