WILLIAM CORLETT

My selection:

Now and Then :  (1995)

It describes 50-year-old Christopher Metcalfe returning to his childhood home after his father's death. While there he remembers the passion he once had at school for another boy, concluding that this great love and the difficulties it led to had a crippling effect upon him during his adult life. Here, he confronts memories of his time at public school and relives the intense, passionate affair he shared with fellow student Stephen Walker. This forces him to come to terms with himself at last. A lonely, repressed middle-aged man haunted by a schoolboy romance that ended in tears and left him blighted for thirty years. Half of the action takes place in a fictitious public school. Once you start to delve into this book, it soon starts to charm you, beguile you and bewitch you. I can't think of many books that I have read lately that I have been so reluctant to put down. In part it is the style. Cool, straightforward inconspicuous. It must help here that whilst this was Corlett's first novel for adults, published at the age of 57, he had actually already written a series of much loved children's books. Corlettt is a master of character. You can't help but feel for the younger Chris, in all his teenage passion and willful self deception. Even the older Chris, desiccated shell of a man that he is, defending his inner life like a castle keep, incited sympathy; and the end shows that he can, perhaps can open out again. Stephen, the 'love of his life' is the type, sexy, passionate but ultimately incapable of commitment. Then there is Chris's mother, just widowed, embarking on a parallel voyage of self-discovery to that of her son, the sister from hell, and the long term female friend, with her own off-on relationships, who doesn't quite know whether she is a fag-hag or not. The schoolboy love affair seizes you by the throat. You want it to succeed in spite of its impossibility, its inability to tell the difference between love and lust. But can any of us really see that boundary? Wild, romantic love, which can strike us at any age. The narrative device of a book switching back and forth in time has become a clich? and can easily irritate, Corlett carries it off almost perfectly , partly because it is so carefully orchestrated. The interplay of the Chris of "now", and the "Kit" of thirty years ago raises interesting question of identity (in what sense, and how far am the "same" man as my teenage self?), marching inexorably towards a common meeting point, in Granada of all places. The ending itself carries a twist. You know that Chris has to meet Stephen again before he can finally be released from the spell. And open himself up to the potential of mature love, potentially even with the schoolboy nuisance whom he had earlier dismissed. Perhaps the ultimate value of this book is as a tribute to the "power of love" (for good and ill). Whilst the gay elements are significant - in making the love that much more impossible, it could also be read as a classic love story. 

Two Gentlemen Sharing :  (1997)

This is more in the nature of gay slapstick, when male lovers Rick and Bless move into the big house of a small English village, provoking a predictably suspicious reaction before peace prevails.  The entire stodgy, gossipy village of Bellingford is curious about the new owners of grand Hall House, "two gentlemen sharing," and what this euphemism implies. London playwright Richard Charteris (called, aptly, "Rich"), doubly blessed with an inheritance and a hit play, Manhattan Boh me, has acquired the stately house as a home for himself and his new young lover, actor-model-nothing-in-particular "Bless" Maynard-- without giving much thought as to what his neighbors might think. When Rich leaves to close a Broadway deal, however, Bless's attempts to fit into village life throw the local reactionaries, eccentrics and busybodies into a collective tizzy. With its gay twist--Bless and Rich aren't the only characters with alternative lifestyles--this casually witty tale expands the boundaries of the typical Home Counties comic novel. Moving along at the brisk pace of a West End farce, the novel also co-opts the stock characters of that genre, featuring country types like Doris Day, a droll charwoman who is much savvier than her dim-witted employers; Bessie Sugar, a meddlesome shopkeeper; and Brigadier Jerrold, a conservative retired brigadier who cross-dresses and passes as his own sister, "Phyllis." Other villagers include Laurence Fielding, a crotchety closeted architect; Maggie Heston, a histrionic and uncensored actress; and a drop-dead gorgeous Italian and his hot-blooded lesbian sister. Assorted slapstick subplots converge on a skinhead-attended road show-turned-brawl and a dance recital, as this breezily light entertainment floats to a happy conclusion.