Book Reviews

By Eric Page

Lois Shearing Bi The Way (£11.99, Jessica Kingsley Publishers).

This excellent, well thought out and balanced book is a much-needed addition to easy to access books around bi, pan and queer experience. Author Shearing is to be congratulated on the dedication and attention to detail that marks this book out. The book works as an introduction to ‘being bi’, is an anthology of authentic bi experience and examines sexuality, gender and intimacy through a bi lens. Exploration of language and how being out bi can change depending on who and where you are. Shearing examines difficult subjects with a deft clarity of purpose, affirming and platforming real people’s experience throughout. It’s an engaging read, and if your head is turned by all sorts of folk, and your pulse quickened, then the book supports an honest self-exploration of what that can mean and the delights, adventures and life-changing experiences you can expect. Rallying, honest and powerfully written, this is a manifesto for bisexual people everywhere and will empower you to live your most authentic bisexual life.

Jennie Kermode Growing Older as a Trans and/or Non- Binary Person (£16.99, Jessica Kingsley Publishers).

Drawing on the experiences of older trans people and those transitioning later in life, this is a definitive guide to ageing as a trans and/ or non-binary person. Author Kermode looks in-depth at the key health concerns and social issues affecting older trans people, including care homes, pensions, inheritance and funeral planning, as well as hormone use and physical changes, isolation and dementia.

Kermode also provides guidance for professionals looking to better meet the needs of these individuals and highlights the important factors that need to be considered at an institutional level to provide the best care for people across the gender spectrum. The book offers significant insights into the lives of our trans elders and should be required reading for anyone working, supporting or providing services to an ageing LGBTQ+ population.

Max Schaefer Children of the Sun (£8.99, Muswell Press).

When this book first came out I was seriously challenged by its violence, subthemes, language and explicit exploration of 1980s south London gay neo Nazis mixed in with the head-spinning occult narratives and gay narrators and the author’s rather charming, seriously precise documenting of skinhead fashions. A heady brew, it’s not changed, although perhaps softened by time (or I’ve been calloused by experience). The book is still a challenge – difficult to read, compulsive, wretched, ruthless and presses its face hard up against yours so you can feel its threatening and menacingly throbbing masculine breath. Replete with exploration of neo- Nazi discourse and its interwoven neo-pagan mythologies, the book is silently rampant.

Schaefer fundamentally understands the methodologies of meta narratives and peels away the layers of fringe beliefs set into the heart of this extremist community, laying out the flayed flesh before us and asking us to see the connective tissue, the places queer and fascist rub against each other in uncomfortable (for some) frottage. By using the relationships and obsessions of the dual protagonists, and their different perspectives in time, we flow though this murky recent past of Britain, given space to reflect on its impact, so familiar in its refrain. There is so much focus on the happenings that the characters themselves are left undeveloped, taking the sting out of the later chapters. An uneasy but fascinating read.

Timothy Schaffert The Perfume Thief (£13.99, Random House).

Clementine is 70, a semireformed con artist clad in chic tailored suits with a keen ‘nose’ for perfume. She has conned her way through the new moneyed flunkies & junkies of belle époque Manhattan, sniffed scented butterflies in Costa Rica, breathed deeply the spice markets of Marrakech. We come across her in 1930s Paris, tending her olfactory emporium, bottling her favourite extracts for her female lovers from the cabarets. So far so good. In this novel from Schaffert, the scene is expertly set, we’re given just the right amount of back story, a sub plot or two is deftly folded into the mix and then war happens and Paris is occupied.

The book takes a chilling turn and examines what it means to really resist oppression, not just to fight back, but to fight for space to love, for queerdom! The book is delicious, lush, fluid and the narrative thumps along, the plot whirling and swirling like a moist silk scarf dipped in an intoxicating fragrance teasing and whipping by, leaving lingering sillages of experience that you feel, rather than see. I’m keen on a good scent novel, and the top notes of The Perfume Thief lead us into a dark, leathery mid tone, hinting at damp, cloying smells, all stupendously supported by the base notes of engaging characters with a sharp tang of wit. At its heart it’s a love story, a passionate scream for intimacy in the face of barbaric hate and a rather thrilling romp through the demimonde world of the Parisian underground queer resistance. Fabulous escapism in more ways than one.