Joseph Chapman: My Molly Life

CW: basically everything (death of family members, physical/sexual assault, incarceration, public execution/pillorying)

Where did James Lovejoy come from, and how did a debut author win the Lambda literary award for Best Gay Romance against such well-known finalists as Garrett Leigh, Rick R. Reed and Marshall Thornton? I had to check it out, and fortunately the book was available through Kindle Unlimited.

What I found is basically a gay Dickens novel - long and dense, with SAT-level vocabulary and matter-of-fact descriptions of the cruelty of life in 18th century London. Our hero Joe goes from a poor but happy childhood to being orphaned as a teenager, dumped in a charity school run by a sexually and physically abusive man, whose “darting piggy eyes were pasted incongruously into a broad, fleshy visage of pale and oleaginous complexion” (that gives you an idea of the writing style). He meets his true love there, a fellow orphan called Chowder, but the road to their happily ever after is long and full of even more danger and tribulations.

In an era when all it took was testimony from two individuals that they had witnessed the accused committing sodomy to result in a death sentence, the stakes are very high indeed for Joe and Chowder. Yet Joe feels very much like a character of his time; he is smart, honorable and quick-witted but not given to much introspection or anxiety. I admired him but didn't really feel him, if that makes sense. Similarly, his true love Chowder is just about perfect and without much depth, and their relationship is one of instant friendship turned love without any drama (other than the fact that they are facing constant poverty, scandal and imprisonment). I found myself more invested in the plot than in the characters.

Joe and Chowder are helped out by a few sympathetic men who step in to save the day in a way that would seem misplaced in a more modern setting but seems perfectly in keeping with a Dickens-like adventure. Many of the boys' patrons turn out to be part of a secret network of gay men, who maintain households of gay servants and even hold an annual ball. I'm not sure if this is based on any historical fact, but if not it lends an interesting fairy tale aspect to the story.

The book is long but with brief chapters and I kept turning the pages to see what horrible thing would happen next to our hero before he could finally claim his happy ending. I'm not sure I would consider this book worthy of a national writing award, but it definitely had a unique tone and voice. It probably isn't for everybody but it more or less worked for me.