I read a review of this book and decided I needed to read something by Patrick Gale. In the blurb, Stephen Fry calls this book ‘tender and funny.’ He is completely right.
This is a Bildungsroman where Eustace moves fairly tortuously through a Weston-super-Mare childhood and his teenage years, helped by the cello and his music teachers. His other scenario is London, as he ages and fights cancer and hopes for a new love in his life.
As always when I find a new author, I looked up Patrick Gale. He lives with his artist husband on a remote farm in south Cornwall, rearing beef cattle, growing cauliflowers for Sainsburys as well as producing frequent very readable novels.
I wondered how autobiographical this story was but at the back of the book we are told: no it isn’t autobiographical, but it does obviously contain large chunks of Patrick Gale’s own life experience. Maybe you couldn’t convincingly describe growing up as a gay teenage boy if that hadn’t been you. The cello was and is an important part of Gale’s life and music plays its way delightfully throughout the whole story.
Weston is beautifully described as a rather down at heel English seaside town and in London we are in a sophisticated, artistic gay scene. I loved the way this book was written and the ending was both tender (yes, Stephen Fry) and uplifting.