The Heart in Exile [with a new introduction and biographical note]

by Rodney Garland, Adam de Hegedus, Neil Bartlett (Introduction)

"So effective is the author's treatment . . . that he manages to bring home in a remarkable manner the suffering of the homosexual. . . . It took real courage to write this story, plus a profound insight into human feelings and sensitivities." - Frank G. Slaughter, New York Times

"A sad, serious first novel called The Heart in Exile cannot fairly be ignored. . . . Its detached picture of barren tragic love and desire in a furtive fantastic 'underground' sector of London can arouse no disgust but only a deep pity coupled with a new understanding." - Marghanita Laski, The Observer

"An extremely important book." - Truth

"A completely honest story of homosexual life in London. . . . It makes no attempt to defend or condemn. A well-written work." - John Betjeman, Daily Telegraph

"Written with great competence." - Walter Allen, New Statesman

Julian Leclerc, a handsome and talented young barrister, has been found dead of an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. The verdict is accidental death, but his fiancée, Ann Hewitt, suspects there's something more to the story. As the grieving woman recounts the details of Julian's tragic end to psychiatrist Dr. Tony Page, he listens with acute interest - but not for the reason she thinks. Years earlier, he and Julian had been lovers, and now, disturbed by the circumstances of his friend's demise, Tony sets out to uncover the truth. His quest will take him from the parties and pubs of the gay underworld of 1950s London to Scotland Yard and the House of Commons as he uses his shrewd and penetrating insight to find who or what was responsible for Julian's death. But he may discover more than he bargained for - about Julian, and himself. . . .

First published in 1953, Rodney Garland's noir thriller The Heart in Exile is both a groundbreaking classic of gay fiction and the first gay detective story. Long unavailable, Garland's famous novel returns to print at last in this edition, which features a new introduction by Neil Bartlett.

Genres: Fiction, Gay, Queer, Mystery, LGBT, Queer Lit, Noir

296 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Childhood: His father was a civil servant in Hungary, first as a county official and then in the Treasury. He rose to a high position and retired with a title.

Work: When Adam de Hegedus was 21 in 1927, a year before his university final examinations, he traveled to Britain, partly to learn English for the Hungarian diplomatic service, and partly to read up on international law for his doctoral thesis. He lived in a South Kensington boarding house and spent some of his time at the British Museum Library, but a great deal more time investigating London. He lived in London from June to December, and after those five months he decided to return to Hungary to complete the final examinations, but that he would abandon the diplomatic service and return to Britain to become a writer.
He then abandoned his diplomatic career and decided to go into journalism and he returned to Hungary. He contributed to The Observer, The London Mercury, and other weeklies.

Bibliography: The Golden Cock, 1934, a short story in Lovat Dickson's Magazine, volume 3, number 1, July, page 20. Hungarian Background, 1937, 302 pages. Don't Keep the Vanman Waiting: A Chapter of Autobiography, 1944, published in London by Nicholson & Watson, 246 pages. Mainly a memoir of army life during the Second World War, but also reflects on his earlier life. Patriotism or Peace?, 1947, published in New York by Charles Scribner's Sons, 266 pages. Rehearsal Under the Moon. The state of the world. Home and away, Notes on England after the Second World War, 1951, published in London by Hutchinson, 232 pages. The Heart in Exile, 1953, a novel, as Rodney Garland, published in London by W. H. Allen, 296 pages.

Friends & Relationships: He stayed for a while in Paris and made friends with Andre Gidé. He settled permanently in London in 1939 and took a flat in South Kensington. The landlord, Philibert, and another tennant, Gustave, were interested in the plight of the national minorities in Europe, and Gustave produced political periodicals. Adam de Hegedus got a reduction in the rent in return for editing an English edition. During this time he made his living mostly by sending articles to his newspaper in Budapest.

Reviews

[Jonathan Frederick Walz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historically important...but you want to punch the narrator in the face by the end.

[Adam Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel is one of the first to openly discuss homosexuality in England, printed originally in 1953.

The book starts off well, along the standard detective line, with a femme fatale coming in to the shop and asking for help, her fiancé is dead and she wants answers.
Our hero detective is a gay (bisexual?) psychiatrist who takes the case due to his own involvement with the deceased and the book plays out as a series of investigations into the death.

There's several good things in the book, and it is worth reading. There's a lengthy tour of the British "underground" which is what they call the queer network. Gays would pick a bar, all go there until it was raided, and then pick another bar. There were no gay bars, only this network relay system. For a slice of post-war gay life in Britain, this book is it, and it portrays the scene well.

The mystery of the plot is okay, if a little half-baked.

The main problem is the extreme emphasis on social status. The class system was alive and well in London in the early 1950's and is mentioned on nearly very page. Generalizations pour off the pages, all working-class people stick together, you can spot working class people even if they try to hide it, the working-class have an inferiority complex, the upper-class have had too much of the Communist ideology so prevalent today, etc, etc.

There is the odd pro-gay passage, the narrator himself is gay, but overall this was the most negative book on homosexuality I've ever read. Inverts will never have real love, "normals" have it better, etc. Combine this with the constant class references, inverts who are lower-class can fit in better, etc, and it gets to be too much.

This class system presented doesn't exist in my life or way of thinking, so many of the pages and pages of generalizations about the different classes really washed over me. For example, the narrator goes to a party and everyone in the room is lower class and they're all staring at the three upper-class people in the corner with a mixture of jealousy and hatred. Class, class, class.

[E.M. Taggart · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1953, this novel uses the investigation of a gay man's suicide as a framework to educate the reader about homosexuality and the gay subculture. The protagonist is a gay psychiatrist who explains the many different types of gay men and gay lifestyles to the reader as he questions various people who knew the suicide. He also engages in some analysis of why homosexuality exists, though the only point there a modern reader is likely to agree with is that gay men cannot be "cured". (The "cured" gay men he mentions would today be understood as bisexual men who chose to lead heterosexual lives.)

Considering the era in which this book was written, it was likely intended to instruct the reader out of stereotypes and preconceptions. The characters include masculine and effeminate gay men, monogamous and promiscuous ones, and so on.

For the modern reader, it's an interesting look at gay history.

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent time capsule of gay men from the early 1950s that shows the attitudes and social structure of them. It reflects the growing sense of community and the pain for the closet door being cracked en. It’s not the whole picture of being gay in mid century England but it does give you a taste of it.

[Christopher Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was absolutely addictive...I cannot wait to discuss this book at our LGBTQ Velvet Page Bookclub at Waterstones Piccadilly in February, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of every page, ♥️ it was what it was !

[frankie lochhead · Rating 3 out of 5]

a challenging read in terms of structure but a very different angle on homosexuality and psychology in the 50s, the gay underworld in london & conversation about class

[Darren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting primarily as an artefact in LGBT history, rather than as a gripping novel.

It being contemporary and (I assume) written by someone who identified as gay or bisexual, it was interesting to read about the gay underground, the danger and thrills, and the predominating theme of middle class gay male interest in working class, straight-acting toughs. The narrator's disgust for 'pansies' for their frivolity and femininity is a conversation still worth having (the fact effeminate gay men give the game away in the pubs is another factor behind his dislike, and one that for the time would have been understandable.

The plot is almost an afterthought, and the pacing and planning seems a little lazy. I'm not sure there's much to be said for the characterisation, either - but for anyone interested in LGBT history and literature, it's definitely worth a read and enjoyable from that perspective.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

For modern readers the attitudes, languages and beliefs of the narrator (and the novelist himself?) regarding homosexuality, class, psychoanalysis and plenty more besides seem incredibly dated but this is a rare contemporaneous window onto the lives of gay men in the early 1950s and surprisingly frank considering the mores of the time. Engagingly written if not, in the end, an especially surprising book - but then it is more a series of character studies than plot driven, and for this reader at least the characters were fascinating in their complexities.

[Yooperprof · Rating 2 out of 5]

3 stars for its undeniable historical interest - a portrait of London gay life (no lesbians here) in the 1940s and early 1950s.

1 star for its mish-mash of half-baked psychoanalytic theory with garden-variety misogyny and an avalanche of sweeping generalizations about the intersection of class and sexuality in Britain. Also the central character/narrator is an incredibly annoying prig.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://thomaswischer.blogspot.com/


I happened upon this book while I was looking up the definition of “occult”, when that word is used to describe something as secret, hidden or concealed from view. There was this quotation supporting the definition:

“Although in the typically occult language of the time, Garland's prescient account [in his notorious homosexual novel of 1953 The Heart in Exile] catches society at a crossroads.”

“Occult”, “ prescient”, “ notorious”, “homosexual” – this book seemed to have it all. I wanted to learn more about it. The British edition’s disturbingly frank London homosexuality cover art hooked me. The sensitive and deeply perceptive homosexual underworld cover art for the U.S. edition was not as alluring.

There not much biographical information about the author available on the internet. Rodney Garland was a pseudonym used by Adam de Hegedus (1906 – 1958). He was born in Budapest and studied for a career in the Hungarian diplomatic service, but he moved to England during the 1930’s where he began to develop his writing career. His first published work in English appeared in 1937. His first novel, Rehearsal Under the Moon, was published in 1946, and he first used the pseudonym Rodney Garland for The Heart In Exile in 1953. I came across two published reviews of The Heart In Exile: in The New York Times, from October 31, 1954, and in Time, from September 20, 1954. I bought the Amazon Kindle version of the first American edition for only ninety-nine cents.

As I began reading the book, I noticed, and then I began counting occurrences of the word “normal”, and I feared falling into a literary kind of numerology by the time I ticked off the thirty-third occurrence of the word – the final count was seventy-two. “Normal” is almost always synonymous with “heterosexual” in this book. I kept counts of some other words too that no longer commonly used to describe homosexuals and their culture. “Invert” is used three times more often than “homosexual”. The society of homosexuals is called “the underworld”. There is a smattering of “pansies”, who seemingly dare to go where mere inverts fear to tread. “Abnormal” is used only four times as a synonym for “homosexual”. I was reading what a cultural artifact from another age, a psychological reliquary.

The main character and narrator, Dr. Anthony Page, is a psychiatrist and an invert. We meet him in his office at his home in Kensington. He is with one of his patients, Miss Wilkins, an obsessive-compulsive hand washer. They are discussing her recent dream. As she is leaving, Miss Wilkins offers an ungloved hand for Dr. Page to shake, a sign of her improving condition under treatment. We never see Miss Wilkins again. His next appointment is a new patient. A Miss Ann Hewitt had phoned the previous day and requested an urgent appointment from Terry, Dr. Page’s office nurse and live-in housekeeper (and invert). We briefly meet Terry, who is wearing a dark blue T-shirt that shows off his physique (lifts weights three times a week at the gym) and is too busy peeling potatoes to usher the new patient into the doctor’s office. Based on her outward appearance, Dr. Page’s immediate diagnosis of Miss Hewitt is “nervous insomnia”, and, also, “County” trying to be “smart” (“Who on earth could have sold her that hat?”). Miss Hewitt tells Dr. Page that she sought the appointment because she had found his name, address and telephone number written on an empty envelope that she found on the desk of her fiance, Julian Leclerc, who was found dead the previous week (an apparent suicide). She hands the envelope to Dr. Page. Her news shocks awake emotions he thought were long lost. His heart thumps and jumps into his throat. “I hadn’t seen him in a very long time,” he says. He does not tell her the he and Julian had been lovers for a while before the war. He stealthily mines her for more information about Julian. Miss Hewitt desperately wants to understand why Julian killed himself. She suspects that Julian was involved with another woman. Miss Hewitt hands Dr. Page a note that is signed by “Ging” (Ginger), which she also found on Julian’s desk but hidden in his blotter. She is considering hiring a private detective to dig out the truth. Throughout the ensuing interview, Dr. Page keeps hidden his motivation, and inner distress, as he maneuvers his way into becoming Miss Hewitt’s doctor and dissuades her from hiring a private detective (“I shall try to find out what I can for you. And I can do it as well as a detective"). During a search of Julian’s flat the next day, he finds a photograph of a handsome young man hidden in the very same picture frame that displays Ann’s portrait. He assumes it to be a picture of Ginger. Finding this Ginger of the photograph becomes his quest as he attempts to uncover the circumstances surrounding Julian’s death. We follow him as he wends through London’s underworld and overworld, playing the sleuth, seeking out and talking to mutual friends and others who may have known Julian.

That Ann Hewitt knew Julian least becomes clear early in the story. Dim, but rich and with mannish good looks, she proposed marriage to Julian after six months of dating, having snagged him with gifts and a family business as a potential client for his law practice. Even through her dull eyes we can see Julian squirm under her smothering. Among the other people we meet: a stockbroker, who initiated Dr. Page into the mysteries of the underworld; a working class invert struggling to become normal; an English Lord with a Butler and a comfortable annual income without having to work for it; an invert Scotland Yard detective; an invert member of Parliament; a successful playwright; a working class invert struggling to climb out of his class; a normal cousin of Ann’s who had been in the Guards with Julian; a normal working class man who had an affair with Julian; and Julian’s philistine law partner. Their different viewpoints contribute pieces to the puzzle of Julian that Dr. Page is trying to assemble. We hear that Julian knew many people, but had no close friends. He was courageous during the war. He could be reckless when he “hunted” in the underworld. He was handsome, intelligent, and charming. He was a hard worker. He had a general air of sadness or unhappiness about him. He was a regular chap who understood the working class bloke. He was seen often in the company of his social inferiors. There was bit of the actor and performer in him. In the end, the pieces of the puzzle adhere loosely, because the people who knew Julian can reflect only the various surfaces that he himself effected; but some of Julian’s surfaces were necessary in order for him to keep hidden his homosexuality, the open expression of which was censured to various degrees by the society in which he lived and worked. This miasma of disapproval, in all its aspects and affects, is thoroughly explored in the conversations that Dr. Page has with Julian’s friends, acquaintances, and family, and also in his sharp descriptions of the few places where inverts could gather openly.

Throughout the meetings and conversations narrated by Dr. Page, he seems incapable of not sorting people by their social class, occupation, and dress. He types all the people that cross his path. The categorizing of his patients is, of course, an essential aspect of his profession, and this is England; nevertheless, his analytic observations carry a peculiar, personal graveness and taste. We get phylum, class, genus, and species whenever we meet someone through Dr. Page’s gaze, even when the only thing before his eyes is an image. The mere photograph of Ginger, for example, begets this analysis:

“He was what in these days some people call the Butch type, with a pleasant, open face, decidedly serious; a face which laughter sometimes doesn't suit. I had to discount the slight alarm in the eyes facing the camera lens…, but the eyes were light-colored and large and I saw how long the eyelashes were and how generous the lines of the mouth. The nose was broad, very broad, almost flat in the middle. But apart from these features the face… was a little stereotyped….[T]his young man looked post-war working class. Except for the features, he need not have been English. At first glance, he could have been any variation of Atlantic Youth… the prototype being Guy Madison or Burt Lancaster…. It was true that the hair-style helped…. It was a "snazzy" haircut…and his thick and rich, light-colored hair lent itself perfectly for the purpose. There are only about a dozen hairdressers in London who understand the trick…. They are expensive and there is usually a queue of cyclists and barrow-boys outside them. Was this "Ginger"? … I was sure now that he was English, more likely from London than the provinces, and I was sure he was "normal." He wore a dark jacket—obviously "semi-drape"—a spearpoint collar and a dark tie in a Windsor knot. He was the type some middle-class inverts look at on street corners with nostalgia, a type sometimes dangerous, but always uninhibited. He would spend a good deal of money on clothes as dramatic as his haircut—more than people like Julian or I or anybody in our social group. We would not be allowed to call attention to ourselves in such blatant if successful ways as Ginger…. They wanted to assert their personality and wanted to be admired by both sexes.”

This dazzling display of social and psychological taxonomy leaves one breathless, but the display tells more about Dr. Page than it tells about the character of the yet to be met Ginger. We see everything, meet everyone through Dr. Page’s eyes. First person narrators are, by nature, not omniscient.

Who is this Dr. Anthony Page? He certainly does talk a lot about himself. He has enormous curiosity about people’s minds, actions and motives. He strives to practice the motto “Physician, heal thyself.” All his life, even as a boy, he was the kind of person, “[in] whom people confided at once, to whom people talked without reserve.” Dr. Page somehow inspires trust in others. This quality has proved an asset for his chosen profession of psychiatry. It also helps him to deceive people when he thinks he needs to keep things hidden, such as his homosexuality, which is censured, to various degrees, by the society in which he lives and works. Dr. Page is almost always empathetic, but rarely sympathetic. The only time that he displays any sentimentality is in his telling the story of his relationship with Julian; otherwise, his analyses of other people’s personal relationships – especially those between people from differing social classes – read like bills of lading, or exchanges of goods and services. He even offers a brief paean to the concept of Platonic Love. Julian had dumped him, and he confesses that this broke his heart. Dr. Page developed a "violent dislike" of love-life in general after their break up, and thus began the changes in his emotional life that still persist. During the war, in the libertine atmosphere of the London underground, he was “as promiscuous as others." A few years after the war, while on a train heading toward New York, he experienced a “spiritual” awakening about the nature of love:“there was only one love, and it was sacred”. After that epiphany, he actively contemplated the idea of love but divorced the idea from his fleshly appetites, which were greatly diminished anyway. As he knows from his own experience with patients, this was not an uncommon condition: “I was alone because I was almost incapable of love, because I was suffering from a stunted heart….” Will he ever be able to unstunt it? During a lengthy and fascinating dialogue with his psychiatric mentor, Dr. Page confesses to a crisis of identity: how can his homosexuality fit with the other pieces of his fragmented life? In essence, this is the same question that Julian, in the course of his own life, had failed to answer for himself. If Dr. Page is finally able to answer this question, he does so in the closing chapters of the novel as he unravels the circumstances surrounding Julian’s death.

I am glad that I chanced upon this book. I was never bored while reading it. The story follows loosely the forms of the detective novel and maintains suspense reasonably well. Most of the characters are interesting to read about. The descriptions of the London underground in their gathering places are fantastic. The 1950’s terminology was at first jolting, but I became accustomed to it as I plowed through the novel. Through the eyes of its main character and narrator, the story explores the inner and outer lives of homosexuals living in a society that forces them to hide a core part of themselves. THE HEART IN EXILE offers a kind of looking glass with which to view our own world in which the inhabitants of the former underworld seem to be becoming normal.

http://thomaswischer.blogspot.com/

[Nicolas Chinardet · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a note at the end of my edition, a reviewer of the book is quoted as calling The Heart in Exile "a study in novel form". This feels like quite an accurate assessment, though I think it is in a way more study than novel.

The book was first published in 1953, when British society was still trying to regroup morally after the licence created by the war. This resulted in a rise in police activity against the homosexual underground (something, that is oddly only indirectly alluded to in this otherwise fairly comprehensive survey). There had been a few high-profile scandals but those that would help tip public opinion towards more sympathy (Gielgud, Montague) were yet to happen at the time of writing (in 1953 and 54, respectively). The Wolfenden committee, which would open the long, winding path towards a relaxation of the law in 1967, would be assembled in 1954. This historical context has a clear impact on the shape and aims of the book, turning it, I think, in the author's mind into a propaganda tool.

Because of this, the book inevitably draws comparison with the 1961 film Victim. In my view it doesn't quite bare it. Perhaps it is due to the Garland's decision to make his protagonist a psychiatrist, perhaps it's the understandable need he felt to be didactic (something also present in the film), but the book does feel preachy at time and looses spontaneity as a result, where Victim generally manages to be much more subtle.

The narrator's judgemental point of view through which everything is filtered creates a strong sense of detachment: the characters are not particularly likeable and the action somehow feels removed and distant. The plot is any case almost non-existent and only really a pretext for the author to present his theories, which is possibly the main failing here. Garland is not afraid of dubious and sweeping generalisations in his social analysis, mostly based around class.

There is also an avowed aspiration to social conformity and much self-loathing, what we'd call internalised homophobia, particularly towards the "sissies", which the narrator takes great pain to tell us he hates. All this despite a generally sympathetic approach to the themes.

The writing flows gracefully, though Garland's attempts at dialect feels a little half-hearted. On the whole this is an interesting and enjoyable read but, being written and set as it is at the very cusp of a new era, the book is now mostly a useful historical document. That is, I think, its main attraction to the modern reader.

[ALEARDO ZANGHELLINI · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. There’s a passage in the novel where Terry, a secondary character, asks why gay novels always have such tragic titles and endings, when the reality of most gay relationships isn’t like that at all. Oh, the irony: this novel doesn’t have a tragic ending only because the tragedy (a suicide) is there from page one; and can you think of a more depressing title than The Heart in Exile? Either a case of being oblivious to the proverbial plank in one’s own eye, or the author had a really twisted sense of humour.

I read the first two thirds of the book really fast... because there was almost nothing to savour in them. I dislike characters that are emotionally constipated, and it takes a very long time for Dr Page to loosen up. (He doesn’t quite reach the dreadfulness of the protagonist of Now and Then, though, so there’s that at least).

The book redeems itself in the last third, as somewhat more interesting characters make their appearance. The novel was almost on a course to getting 3 stars; then, a few pages from the end, Dr Page takes it upon himself to tell a young man that he is not a true invert and was simply *infected* (yup, you read that right) and can get cured... To be fair, this almost felt tacked on, as if the publisher insisted on it; but, since it’s there, I can’t very well pretend it isn’t. So my final rating reflects that.

Mind you, as many other mid-century books on homosexuality, this is more complex than simply a story of self-hatred. But, frankly, it’s rather dull and compares poorly to other gay-themed books from the same era.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is a mystery set in the gay community of post-World War II London, it is much more than that. It explores the nature of love and the very personal truths experienced by homosexuals, as well as the gay life, which was necessarily an underworld in London at the time. It is this second aspect of the book that allows it to rise above the average sentimental story. This book is intensely about the lives of a psychiatrist and his former lover, who was found dead from what appeared to be an overdose of sleeping pills. The doctor's investigation into what happened led to revelations about himself that profoundly affected his life.
This book, which examined the variety of homosexual life in London and offered a touching account of how one might transform his life in unexpected ways when faced with the ups and downs of daily existence, captivated me. It was both fascinating and profoundly touching.

[Beáta · Rating 3 out of 5]

A számkivetett szív egy meleg regény, ami Londonban játszódik. Szerzője Hegedüs Ádám, aki Rodney Garland álnéven írta ezt a történetet.
A főszereplő, dr. Page, pszichiáter, egy régi barátjának halálának körülményeit kezdi kutatni és ennek kapcsán megismerkedhetünk a londoni melegek életével. Különös világ tárul elénk és a regény végén az is kiderül, hogy miért lett Julian Leclerc öngyilkos.
3,5-re értékelném, ha lenne rá lehetőségem.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a terrific artifact of gay life in the UK in the years following WWII. A psychiatrist is trying to determine the reasons why his first lover committed suicide. His search takes him the gay scene and the people involved and is fascinating. The book is very much of its time period with dated psychology, referring to gays as inverts and being highly conscious of the class system existing at the time in the UK.

[CQM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating and unusually explicit in its depiction of gay relationships and behaviours in postwar London, this is probably more important than it is good. None of the characters are particularly likeable, and many of the attitudes and opinions are frankly laughable when read in 2024, but it reads well, and much of the detail is interesting.

[Amanda Kovacs · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book! I was honestly surprised at how gently and positively it dealt with queer identities considering when the book was written! At first, I was definitely a bit bored but it picked up fairly quickly. I really felt that this was easy to read and very digestable; I was able to read basically the whole book in one sitting (had to for class lmao) so def easily readable.

[Andrew Levey · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read considering the time it was written. But also a difficult read when the main character is not very likeable and gay people are referred to as ‘inverts’ constantly. It’s in keeping with the teens used in the 50s but still jarring some 70 years later.

[Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an interesting novel to read from a historical angle but I would fist fight the protagonist in a heartbeat

[Eden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know there's something wrong with me, but dismal mid-century queer novels are my jam.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating glimpse of a contemporary (non English!) writer taking on the post war gay scene in London. Lots of bonkers English class stuff.

[scavola scavola · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tag line is, "SENSITIVE AND DEEPLY PERCEPTIVE STORY OF THE HOMOSEXUAL AND HIS UNDERWORLD . . ." That about sums it up as, during his investigation into a friend's suicide, we come across several types of "INVERTS". From his POV as a psychologist, each of these is analyzed and, oddly enough, still ring true today. Quite an intriguing and informative book, with a little bit of heart at the end . . .

[carelessdestiny · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's strange that this novel isn't more celebrated. It's so of its time (London just after WW2) and yet very forward looking in it's attitude towards the way gay men struggled to achieve self-esteem. The narrator - a psycho-analyst - at times is thoroughly dislikeable and at other times completely admirable, very much like how we feel about ourselves.

[Virgowriter (Brad Windhauser) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not the most well written book you'll ever read but hyper important in queer lit, especially given the era in which it was written. Like most gay fiction, it has the Air of tragedy but without a whiff of apology. That, like Highsmith's the Price of Salt, makes it a big deal. Groundbreaking in its honest examination of gay life style. Still holds up.

[Franstew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fabulously dated lines about the appeal of the working classes. A real glimpse into a life no longer in existence. Class and sexuality both changed so much since it was published. Lovely description of Islington as a slum area.

[Arwen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The narration was too slow. I was a third into the book before the mystery finally presented itself. There was a long section where all the MC does was ask the same questions over and over. I'm ashamed to admit I DNF.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stars as a study of gay British life in the 50s, but the narrator had such a didactic tone and being in his POV was not great. Lots of out of date, "not even wrong" Freudian theories.
Probably the low point was him seriously comparing his homosexuality to another person's pedophilia.

[Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent... Interesting insight into the states of mind surrounding homosexuality in post-war Britain.

[Cecil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some parts of the book were interesting, particularly those parts which described life in the 50's. On the whole, I found the book boring.