John Roman Baker

I found out about this fine novel with great difficulty, and only heard about it on YouTube by an enthusiastic reader. I live in the UK and in my opinion a lot of Queer fiction is just not valued or published. Women writers seem to fare better or so it seems to me, and of course this is a good thing, but for Gay/Queer writers, it again seems to me, are considered less worthy of attention. Admittedly we have a smaller population than the USA but then again is it because of that we have less LGBT books or are they quite simply too difficult to sell ? Or is it due to a deep rooted psychological prejudice ? I am bewildered by this.

This is tripe, and yet authors like Edmund White read it once a year. I was intrigued by the first long paragraph in the book, and read it three times, but then came the endless dialogue ( which is tortuously boring ) and the characters churning these words out are totally shallow. I read it solely on White's recommendation, and to a certain extent it fits into the Ivy Compton-Burnett and Ronald Firbank school of writing, emulated by Tory readers who find these authors ' terribly ' profound, and fits well into the Upper Class world of chatter, gossip, and gossamer thin literature. The plot is trivial, but profound to those who are dedicated to a class ridden society, to privilege, and lacking in compassion for those who are less fortunate. Sadly there is too much of this divorce from any kind of real living in English Fiction, and Henry Green exists for the elite who bring him in and out of fashion when they are frightened he may become either too well known, or worse extinct. Green hides his Tory politics quite well, but then writers of his kind mostly do. It is the pretence of this breed not to ' show it off ', politics being a dirty word even to them.

I like this play and consider it to be perhaps Sherman's best. I saw it with Vanessa Redgrave and Oleg Menchikov and he was so good that I suffered the Russian without subtiles ( sadly my Russian is rudimentary ) but I really would have liked to have known what he was saying. Matrin Sherman clearly knows what he is saying and probably the other actors are privy to a translation as well. In the published script by Amber Lane I hoped to see at least notes at the back translating the dialogue, No such luck. Esenin was a great poet of the so called Siver Age of Russian poetry in the 20th C. and Isadora Duncan had a relationship with him. He committed suicide in an hotel room, and there are rumours it was not suicide. A fascinating play, but in the published script I would dearly like to now why ( perhaps at the end ) what he has to say is not made available. It seems to me a snobbish denial of knowledge held back, and reading the play I was both frustrated and furious.

It has taken me years to discover this extraordinary book as well as the writer. For me the two greatest countries in the world conjoin here, and neither are above criticism, but once loved the love continues. Andrei Makine is as great as the countries he describes and for anyone who believes in humanity, despite itself, despite its cruelty should read this book. If I only had one book to give to others it would be this book, and I say this as a writer who loves many other writers and I always thought there were many Holy Grails in books. There are many writers who I thought approached this but now I can truly say I have found that writer who makes me fully believe in love and love of mankind.