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The Sins of My Fathers
My two fathers brought me up in 1950s Britain, a time when men had to hide their love for each other. Now Louis is the only one left and wants to tell me his own story…. Readers’ “tender, engaging, effortless.” “such a powerful relationship between Louis and his son…. a lovely writer” “a touching and thought-provoking read, full of atmosphere and emotion.” “Julian Gray is an absolutely lovely writer, and there is so much humanity and illumination in this novel.” “I’m so happy I had a chance to read it…. and so enjoyed watching this tender love story unfold.” “It is quickly apparent when a reader finds themselves in capable hands. I found the writing assured and with just the right combination of pace and context.” “…a perspective that really deserves to be heard. Julian Gray is an excellent writer of character – they all felt so vivid and nuanced; each with their own demons, but all treated with such a tender touch that the reader was able to find redemptive qualities in all of them. The development of Louis and Rob’s relationship and how each of them is shaped by their widely differing experiences of war and family, was particularly well done. Parenthood is so intricately explored – from the mixture of liberations and oppressions experienced by Vita’s free-love approach and the conservative quiet of Louis’ parents, to the tenderness of Louis and his son’s relationship in the present. I really enjoyed the forays into psychoanalysis and art, and the wide scope of locations and stages of war across which Louis’ story played out. The explorations of masculinity, vulnerability, and the multiple forms that love can take make for a powerful read. I very much enjoyed it.”
- GenresM M Romance
314 pages, Paperback
Published June 4, 2019
About the author
Julian Gray
42 books32 followersJulian has written numerous non-fiction books and articles under another name.
He is married, with three children and lives in London.
He is married, with three children and lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
August 12, 2019
Not perfect at all but I honestly couldn't not give this 5 Stars.
I'm finding myself gravitating away from contemporary romance books more and more and finding such pleasure in reading something different.
This IS a love story,not in the conventional sense.It's so much more.It's taking what life throws at you,and making the best of things in a way.
A story spanning over years is one of my favourite things to read and this is one of the best I've read in a while.
Christopher knows his father,Louis,is dying...
He was brought up with a lot of love and affection from him and his other father,Rob,....but he didn't know their story,until now....
And it's emotional,so emotional,thought provoking as he learns how his two fathers met and navigated their lives through war,separation,and so much more.
I might write more when I get my emotions under control but suffice to say I hung on ever word here.
Julian Gray is a seriously talented Author and I'm all for promoting Authors in the MM genre that don't get enough exposure...
Take a chance with this one.
Available on KU.
June 10, 2019
This is a love story.
In 1938 Louis is in his late teens, the son of traditional and rather dour parents. One day he goes to a public meeting on the Spanish war, in which his brother has lately died. He meets Rob, a young man from a bohemian, freethinking home. They are drawn to each other, but things will never be simple, as their different upbringings and behaviour conspire to drive them apart. Then the war comes, and drives the two men to pursue very different paths – Rob to shelter from the war in London’s artistic underground, Louis to serve with the Army’s slightly sinister behind-the-lines enforcers, the Field Security Service (FSS). The war pulls them further apart, but neither can forget the other.
Best not to say whether or not there is a happy ending; one reads a book to find out. But Julian Gray’s The Sins of my Fathers is an unusual and highly effective novel that winds its way through prewar and wartime London, the grim suffering and cynicism of wartime Naples, postwar Austria and into the 1990s. It’s a compelling and sometimes very moving narrative that holds the reader right to the last page.
There are several reasons why it does. One is its relative brevity. With such a long span of years, this book could have been a huge station-bookstall doorstop of a novel, but Gray has kept it to the right length and the narrative is very well-paced. He has clearly done his research on all the eras in the book (including on the FSS, the story of which isn’t well-known). But he wears his knowledge lightly and there is no unnecessary detail; he just makes the reader comfortable in each decade. He also gets the pacing just right. In part this is because of a highly effective narrative structure; the book is told principally from the viewpoint of Louis’s son as he seeks to uncover his father’s story 50 years on, but there are frequent yet smooth transitions to Louis’s point of view at the time.
Another reason this book works is Gray’s mastery of character. Louis and Rob are well-drawn, but there are a number of important secondary characters who are also remarkably alive. One of these, Louis’s FSS colleague Peter Dashwood, is especially vivid and credible. So is the figure of Ellie, who plays an important part in this book; she’s actually drawn from life, and was the subject of Gray’s previous book, the non-fiction Interrogating Ellie.
Finally, there is Gray’s ability to create atmosphere. This leaps out at you in the very first scene, when Louis’s son goes to see him, knowing him to be ill, and finds he has worsened; a small detail – that the kitchen stove is not lit – tells us everything we need to know.
But best of all, this really is a love story. That’s not easy to do well.
In 1938 Louis is in his late teens, the son of traditional and rather dour parents. One day he goes to a public meeting on the Spanish war, in which his brother has lately died. He meets Rob, a young man from a bohemian, freethinking home. They are drawn to each other, but things will never be simple, as their different upbringings and behaviour conspire to drive them apart. Then the war comes, and drives the two men to pursue very different paths – Rob to shelter from the war in London’s artistic underground, Louis to serve with the Army’s slightly sinister behind-the-lines enforcers, the Field Security Service (FSS). The war pulls them further apart, but neither can forget the other.
Best not to say whether or not there is a happy ending; one reads a book to find out. But Julian Gray’s The Sins of my Fathers is an unusual and highly effective novel that winds its way through prewar and wartime London, the grim suffering and cynicism of wartime Naples, postwar Austria and into the 1990s. It’s a compelling and sometimes very moving narrative that holds the reader right to the last page.
There are several reasons why it does. One is its relative brevity. With such a long span of years, this book could have been a huge station-bookstall doorstop of a novel, but Gray has kept it to the right length and the narrative is very well-paced. He has clearly done his research on all the eras in the book (including on the FSS, the story of which isn’t well-known). But he wears his knowledge lightly and there is no unnecessary detail; he just makes the reader comfortable in each decade. He also gets the pacing just right. In part this is because of a highly effective narrative structure; the book is told principally from the viewpoint of Louis’s son as he seeks to uncover his father’s story 50 years on, but there are frequent yet smooth transitions to Louis’s point of view at the time.
Another reason this book works is Gray’s mastery of character. Louis and Rob are well-drawn, but there are a number of important secondary characters who are also remarkably alive. One of these, Louis’s FSS colleague Peter Dashwood, is especially vivid and credible. So is the figure of Ellie, who plays an important part in this book; she’s actually drawn from life, and was the subject of Gray’s previous book, the non-fiction Interrogating Ellie.
Finally, there is Gray’s ability to create atmosphere. This leaps out at you in the very first scene, when Louis’s son goes to see him, knowing him to be ill, and finds he has worsened; a small detail – that the kitchen stove is not lit – tells us everything we need to know.
But best of all, this really is a love story. That’s not easy to do well.
Want to Read
November 23, 2020Sinfully fun elf gave me this gift and brightened up my day, thanks so much for the smile and the book! 😊 I look forward to reading.
June 10, 2019
Beautiful, poignant prose which holds a magnifying glass up to the complicated relationships within a family whilst at the same time providing a fascinating insight into WWII and beyond. There is a great blend of history and fiction within this epic story of love, friendship and prejudice which haunted me long after the final page.
January 28, 2020
All the time I was reading this, I felt like it should be made into a movie. This was an emotional and heartfelt story about two men and the unconventional life they led, meeting and falling in love in the late 1930’s and eventually raising a son together. The story is told from two points of view; from the adult son who was raised with love, but never really understood his parents history, and from his remaining father who fills in the wonderful but often complicated details of their life together.
I thought it was lovely book from a talented author.
I thought it was lovely book from a talented author.
June 11, 2019
This spy-on-the-wall account of the emotional lives of men caught up in war shows a deep level of understanding of how a son gradually discovers the truth about his father. There is a tenderness and authenticity in the dialogue and a cinematic quality in the design of character that produces a deeply moving account of how one generation can gradually enter the emotional lives another. There is a stark contrast between sensitivity of the personal and the brutality of the impersonal that adds momentum to what is a profoundly moving story.
July 7, 2019
Julian Gray’s second novel features recollections from the adult of life of Louis, an elderly gay man. The story is relayed to his son, Christopher, during regular domestic visits in the final weeks of Louis’s life. Christopher, who knows almost nothing about his mother (and now wants to know more), grew up with Louis and his partner Rob. The couple provided a nurturing home although, given that gay relationships were still illegal, numerous lies and half-truths would have been necessary to avoid the attention of the law and social services. The daily tensions this would have raised are suggested, rather than dwelt upon, yet convey the deep insult of a law that was only repealed in 1967. Intriguingly, there is a suggestion that it was Louis’s work with the intelligence services that protected them from prosecution (didn’t help Alan Turing much, was my thought …)
As in Gray’s novel ‘Interrogating Ellie’ nearly all of the more catastrophic events (early death, war, a death by house fire, abuse) take place away from centre stage. This has verisimilitude; while the central characters are certainly affected by these events, the plot does not require that they are all witnessed directly nor related in detail. The mid 20th century Hampstead world is suggested through a sprinkling of cameos of the artists, psychologists and ‘free-thinkers’ amongst whom there was, arguably, greater tolerance of difference. This was more Rob’s world than Louis’s, whose working life was obscured from his son by official secrecy. Christopher realises after his father’s death that some of the stories he has heard, remain opaque.
There is much to like in this novel – for example the tender relationship between Christopher and his father, the nuanced explorations of masculinities, the light touch with events and the interweaving of real people and invention. I remain uncertain whether some of the account might have been based on real life – could, I wondered, the dedication ‘for Patrick and Clive, who were brothers’ be a reference to a couple who allowed people to believe they were siblings? Why does Ellie, the author’s real life mother appear (admittedly with an ambiguous role) in this novel? There may be other entanglements to unmask… I trust that Julian Gray has a third novel on its way and I will certainly be pleased to read it.
As in Gray’s novel ‘Interrogating Ellie’ nearly all of the more catastrophic events (early death, war, a death by house fire, abuse) take place away from centre stage. This has verisimilitude; while the central characters are certainly affected by these events, the plot does not require that they are all witnessed directly nor related in detail. The mid 20th century Hampstead world is suggested through a sprinkling of cameos of the artists, psychologists and ‘free-thinkers’ amongst whom there was, arguably, greater tolerance of difference. This was more Rob’s world than Louis’s, whose working life was obscured from his son by official secrecy. Christopher realises after his father’s death that some of the stories he has heard, remain opaque.
There is much to like in this novel – for example the tender relationship between Christopher and his father, the nuanced explorations of masculinities, the light touch with events and the interweaving of real people and invention. I remain uncertain whether some of the account might have been based on real life – could, I wondered, the dedication ‘for Patrick and Clive, who were brothers’ be a reference to a couple who allowed people to believe they were siblings? Why does Ellie, the author’s real life mother appear (admittedly with an ambiguous role) in this novel? There may be other entanglements to unmask… I trust that Julian Gray has a third novel on its way and I will certainly be pleased to read it.
June 15, 2019
This book tells a story. That's important because that's what I want from a novel, to be swept along eager to know what's going to happen next. The narrator talks to his dying father to find out more about his own story through the story of his two fathers while he is still alive. His mother Ellie (whom we know as the main character of the author's previous book) makes an appearance towards the latter part. This book is also very much about sex – how sex can shape whole lives, how we think about sex as individuals and societies, how sex impacts on relationships and often drives them, how progressive ideas about sex can bear their own potential for abuse. Sex here is the major fact and foundation of life and human relations, and it is approached un-hysterically. Sex is not always about love, but when it is, it allows us to make sense of our lives. This book shows that human relationships are complex and complicated, its characters feel real and the background pre, during and post WW2 both in London and Europe is well researched and observed – I have learnt some fascinating things, for example how syphilis was treated in the early days of antibiotics. By the end, it feels like we have an understanding of the main characters' lives and times – as much as we can ever understand other people.
June 24, 2019
I read 'Interrogating Ellie', Julian Gray’s first novel, within a day, keen to find out what would happen to Ellie as she lived her complicated life under adverse and shifting conditions in war-torn Europe before, during and after WW2. 'The Sins of My Fathers', the author’s beautifully-researched and detailed new novel, covers a similar period, and adds to the original story. It examines, through different characters’ eyes, the ‘truth’ of what happened to them – adding the hindsight of later years, during which the people involved may well have changed their own narratives, and reinvented themselves and their relationships with others.
The novel is billed as a tender story of two men, Louis and Rob, who had to hide their love for each other, and their wish to live together, during the 1950s. There is also a convincing and developing emotional link between Louis and his son. All the characters are realistically complex, reacting to different, sometimes life-threatening, situations and people. It took me a little while to settle to the narrative thread, and the increasing focus on one person rather than other characters, but I enjoyed the evocation of the period, the emotional depth and some lovely snippets of detail which will stay with me.
The novel is billed as a tender story of two men, Louis and Rob, who had to hide their love for each other, and their wish to live together, during the 1950s. There is also a convincing and developing emotional link between Louis and his son. All the characters are realistically complex, reacting to different, sometimes life-threatening, situations and people. It took me a little while to settle to the narrative thread, and the increasing focus on one person rather than other characters, but I enjoyed the evocation of the period, the emotional depth and some lovely snippets of detail which will stay with me.
June 11, 2019
The Sins of the Fathers is a beautifully told and touching tale of a young man’s sexual awakening just before the outbreak of the Second World War.
It begins in the present with Christopher who, as his elderly father Louis enters his final days, desperately wants to know the truth about why he was raised by two fathers and his mother’s identity before it is too late.
Louis relents, taking us on a remarkably moving journey that begins in heady pre-war London. Here Louis meets Rob, a promising young artist, whose bohemian lifestyle including Vita, Rob’s free-spirited mother, enthrals the unworldly Louis. Where Louis is constrained by his suburban upbringing, Rob knows no such constraints and appears to have few boundaries. The two fall deeply in love, in a relationship that is tested to its limits. In amongst the tragedy and devastation of war, Louis seeks to makes sense of who he is and where his path to true happiness lies.
The Sins of My Fathers charts Louis and Rob’s love for each other against the odds with warm and emotion. Overall, a beautifully told tale that stayed with me long after I'd finished reading it.
It begins in the present with Christopher who, as his elderly father Louis enters his final days, desperately wants to know the truth about why he was raised by two fathers and his mother’s identity before it is too late.
Louis relents, taking us on a remarkably moving journey that begins in heady pre-war London. Here Louis meets Rob, a promising young artist, whose bohemian lifestyle including Vita, Rob’s free-spirited mother, enthrals the unworldly Louis. Where Louis is constrained by his suburban upbringing, Rob knows no such constraints and appears to have few boundaries. The two fall deeply in love, in a relationship that is tested to its limits. In amongst the tragedy and devastation of war, Louis seeks to makes sense of who he is and where his path to true happiness lies.
The Sins of My Fathers charts Louis and Rob’s love for each other against the odds with warm and emotion. Overall, a beautifully told tale that stayed with me long after I'd finished reading it.
August 3, 2019
I had no preconceptions starting this book as I had never read Julian Gray before and knew nothing about this book. It was slow to start, and I found it hard to keep track of the characters, but I am so glad I stuck with it. A son is visiting his dying father and has unanswered questions about his mother and his upbringing. His fathers were gay men at a time when homosexuality was illegal and his upbringing was unusual. He had questions about his mother and found it difficult to ask his father outright as his father was prone to keeping secrets. The book is well researched and the gives vivid details of life during the second world war, particularly the fate of the people of Naples and I found myself caught up in the life and loves of Louis and the questions his son needed answering. Intriguing book.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
July 10, 2019
A son questions his elderly father, trying to fill the gaps in his understanding of his own history. His much-loved father has many qualities, but being forthright is not among them, however the son continues to coax. What emerges is a story of love and sex in a time of war, complicated by the war itself and by the fact that the father was gay at a time when being gay was illegal. It's a touching story written in a straightforward, unfussy way. It's packed with incident. It makes you think. And the wartime details are very well-researched, so that it really does read as if the author had first-hand experience. It took me a few pages to get into it, but once I did, I found it a real page turner. The son understands much more at the end than he did at the beginning, but there are still uncertainties, still questions left unanswered and that felt true to life.
June 13, 2019
Very poignant and powerful story telling
From such an intimate but strangely distant scene between the narrator son and his failing elderly father at the start, this story draws you into what becomes a wonderfully dense epic, with a really vivid sense of place and time: London and the contemporary art scene of the 30s through to the 60s, the social mores and restrictions of the times, attitudes to psycho analysis, and a truly motley array of interesting characters. I would love to have met the charismatic Vita!
For me the most powerful and vivid part of the story is that set in Southern Italy in ’43 and ’44 where we are immersed in the aftermath of the allied invasion of Italy - great stuff - and leading to intriguing and very moving outcomes.
August 5, 2019
I thoroughly enjoyed this story about a son searching for the truth as he cares for his dying father. Time is running out. One of his fathers, a famous sculptor, has already passed away. It falls to the ailing Louis to finally explain how this unusual family came to pass. But Louis has been a British spy since the second world war and secrets are his stock in trade. Coming clean to his only son on his deathbed means retracing his steps to before the war. Gradually he lays bare his difficult life as war and prejudice push and pull him between fates, between Rob and Ellie.
This book provides a glimpse into a rare world. Beautifully written and well researched, it's both a moving and satisfying read. Perfect for lovers of stylish drama and historical fiction.
This book provides a glimpse into a rare world. Beautifully written and well researched, it's both a moving and satisfying read. Perfect for lovers of stylish drama and historical fiction.
June 18, 2019
The Sins of My Fathers is a page-turner of a novel that kept me intrigued until the end. Christopher desperately wants to find out from his dying father, Louis why he was raised by two fathers and who his mother is. Louis takes us a journey from the late 1930s when he falls in love with Rob, the son of a bohemian artist. Their relationship is tested to the limits because of their personal differences and the time they were living. Julian Gray tells the story with great warmth and emotion.
June 24, 2019
This is a fantastic book taking the reader through wartime relationships exploring love and betrayal. The characters are complex and interesting and it is unusual to see a historical book exploring a gay couple raising a child. I loved the journey through Europe with the vivid descriptions really putting the reader right there with the characters.
January 28, 2020
4 stars
All the time I was reading this, I felt like it should be made into a movie. This was an emotional and heartfelt story about two men and the unconventional life they led, meeting and falling in love in the late 1930’s and eventually raising a son together. The story is told from two points of view; from the adult son who was raised with love, but never really understood his parents history, and from his remaining father who fills in the wonderful but often complicated details of their life together.
I thought it was lovely book from a talented author.
All the time I was reading this, I felt like it should be made into a movie. This was an emotional and heartfelt story about two men and the unconventional life they led, meeting and falling in love in the late 1930’s and eventually raising a son together. The story is told from two points of view; from the adult son who was raised with love, but never really understood his parents history, and from his remaining father who fills in the wonderful but often complicated details of their life together.
I thought it was lovely book from a talented author.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews