Page’s Pages

Book Reviews by Eric Page

Nick Maynard Cripple: A 21st Century Parable (£13.99, published by New Generation Publishing).

This book is written in an interesting style so you can – literally – flip the narrative anyway you choose. It’s fiction and formulated in a staccato way; filled with footnotes and appendices and feels fragmentary but also fluid in a creative, unsettled kind of way.

Like listening to a story being told, one you know, but which is presented in a different way, shifting perspective, narrator, time or geography, so you skip around the meaning in long narrative arcs, always in view of the protagonists but with the light and shade of the passing of the day altering the way you see them.

It’s certainly a book setting a very high bar that it doesn’t always reach, which is no criticism of the ideas, but it would benefit from the attention of a constructive editor and the depiction of dialogue is clunky in parts. The plot is pretty simple, Carol and Jonathan live together, mother and son, carer and cared for, able bodied and quadriplegic. They have the same windows they look out of, on to the same world, a rather delightfully portrayed Manchester of 20 years ago. What they see and how they wrap and warp that into their own lives, dreams and narratives gives this book its momentum.

It’s a story about hope and needs, about unexpressed queer desire and how a stranger can become a focus for a world out of reach. The author knows Manchester very well and captures its brick-lined streets and rain-streaked patina magnificently, the city becomes a character all its own. Each chapter has a rune, suggesting perhaps casting a handful of runes, leading to some kind of meta reading or randomness.

As the book moves through your hands, the author parses what it means to be mobile, broken, stuck, desired, loved and the various ways the human mind finds exuberant flights of astonishing freedom, breaking the bonds of physical limitations to find a raw honest expression of self. Like the reader, this book is not perfect but it wants to be loved, as do the main protagonists, and that burning desire is much to be admired.

Matt Cain The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle (£16.99, published by Headline Review).

What a lovely book this is, I sighed when I finished it, it touched me. It follows the journey of quiet, unassuming postman Albert, in his 60s, living alone since the death of his mother 18 years previously in a small northern town. With no friends and nothing to look forward to, the lonely future he faces terrifies him. He realises it is finally time to be honest about who he is. He remembers George, a man who touched him in many ways, who he can’t forget, so sets out to find this long-lost love of his life, and has an unforgettable and life-affirming adventure on the way with people who support and challenge him, ending up in a famous London gay bar to face his truth.

Cain’s prose is warm, filled with humour and wry observations of life, tinged with regret and reflections of what-might-have-been but also with a passion for renewal. It’s utterly charming and seduced me into almost being unable to put it down. The narrative is suffused with joy, skipping around with an inventiveness that carries the plot along. Arthur is written with such gawky, passionate reality that you join him on his journey of discovery, also realising that it’s never too late to strike out for the things you really, really want. Reminding us that shame, lies and regret also fade with time, the book is wonderfully affirming, filled with love and humour. This is a delightful book, one which confirms the satisfying joy of love’s recovery.

Isabel Costello Scent (£12.99, published by Muswell Press).

When Clementine and Edouard’s last child leaves home, the cracks in their marriage become impossible to ignore. Her work as a perfumer is no longer providing solace and her sense of self is withering. With the narrative journeying through Provence and Paris, the present day and the sun-dappled past, this unflinching look at how the desire for a compelling relationship and fulfilling life tears at the fabric of established life is a portrait of sensual struggles. The book is a sensual treat, filled with olfactory observations and passion. The appearance of an old lover, one filled with electric possibilities and re-embraces of her bisexual past, introduces discord and conflict into the calm days of her existence. Costello’s prose expertly leads us into the unsettled mind of the protagonist, examining what sacrifice and fear can drive you to do, the arguments and accusations, realisations and regrets of having spent a long time with one person, and the implications of suppressed or forgotten desires resurfacing and demanding acknowledgment. Costello’s narrative thrusts the truth under our noses, we smell the complex scent of fear, the astringent sting of truth, and the warm undertones of honesty, and examines the price that finally being honest with yourself.

Charles Moriarty X (£40, https://beforefrank.com/ collections/x).

This superbly finished photography book from photographer Moriarty takes us on a very personal journey into his work from the past 10 years. We see gay men through his eyes, some of them looking back at us, others very used to being looked at, but all captured by this unblinking gaze which reduces them all to still, intimate images.

Opening with a Dylan Thomas poem, there is an ethereal, detached feeling to this book, and it features a diverse selection of men, each unique in their own way. The images are presented fresh, unadorned, asking us to present our own ideas of the underlying narratives at play here, but they are all clearly queer, superb images of the male form and some startlingly honest portraits. His work is precise, detailed and careful.

Moriarty photographed the iconic cover for Amy Winehouse’s debut album Frank and works across the entertainment industry and is part of the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery. The book is a hefty tome, 200 pages of 60+ very sexy men and through the variation of captures, some intended, others with a feeling of secret moments, clandestine versus candid, there is also a feeling of the creator captured in this collection, the carefully curated choice sharing his own progression and acceptance of his queerness.

Gary Needham has the last word with an essay which explores connections to other modern queer art photographers such as Goldin and Mapplethorpe.