"At times witty and at others harrowing, Bratton’s book memorably explores the unexpected depths of its protagonist. This novel revisits classic literature but never feels beholden to it." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“Bratton has created a marvelously detailed world of supernumerary aristocrats, as rich, toxic and wild as the best entries in the 'Real Housewives' franchise." —The New York Times Book Review
"Darkly witty... a chronicle of survival and healing from generational trauma." —Publishers Weekly
“A compelling debut [that] digs into the conflicting emotions at the heart of an aristocratic family in 2010s England…Bratton writes about this rarefied milieu with fascination and dismay—the satire here is both subtle and very funny.” —The Guardian
"Bratton’s electric debut novel transforms Shakespeare into a modern, queer drama that’s as bawdy as it’s sharp." —Hugh Ryan, The New York Times
"Allen Bratton's Henry Henry brilliantly highlights the tension between history and modernity, power and freedom, and fathers and sons. A darkly humorous examination of the weight of privilege packed with drugs, dicks, Catholicism, cigarettes, and, yes, love—Henry Henry is a sharply-written party you don't want to miss." —Isaac Fitzgerald, author of Dirtbag Massachusetts
"Darkly witty... a chronicle of survival and healing from generational trauma." —Publishers Weekly
"Henry Henry is carnal and precise, a challenging taxonomy of familial and personal failure that Bratton renders without tidiness or judgment." —Raven Leilani, author of Luster
"Not only is Henry Henry one of the first books of the year that has inspired an audible gasp, it’s also the year's finest debut. It has the power to reinvigorate literature with the type of daring prose that is becoming much too rare." —Jeremy O. Harris, Playwright of Slave Play
"Allen Bratton observes social and emotional detail with a shocking, thrilling level of precision and wisdom. This book bounds between the surreal and the heartrending, telling a story which is beautiful and desolate and wildly funny all at once. It's sexy, compassionate, uncommonly imaginative: I've never read anything quite like it." —Oisín McKenna, author of Evenings and Weekends
"To say that Henry Henry offers a vision of queer healing as well as queer suffering is not to say that Hal heals, but that he begins to see that disinheriting the past may be possible. It’s a fragile possibility, but one that offers a kind of hope—not only to Hal, but also to the worst of us sinners." —Cleveland Review of Books
★ 2024-01-05
The complex life of an affluent young man.
There are a few things you’ll notice early on in Bratton’s novel, beginning with the fact that its protagonist goes by Hal and that he’s the “son and heir” of a wealthy titled man named Henry. By the time you get to Hal’s sporadic liaisons with an aging actor named Jack Falstaff, you’ll have a better sense of the Henry IV of it all. But there’s more here than an updating of a classic literary work. Set in the years just before the Brexit vote, the novel follows Hal as he traverses London and consumes various drugs—especially booze and cocaine. There’s a world-weary tone to the narration, including one memorable taxonomy of vomit and other evocative passages: “His own stink hovered about him: skunky weed, spilt Pimm’s and gin, cigarettes smoked in a flat that had had a lot of cigarettes smoked in it before, the vile mix of sweat and deodorant that had congealed under his armpits and was soaking through his pale blue Oxford shirt.” Hal begins a relationship with a fellow child of privilege, Henry Percy (at one point, Bratton describes Percy’s kissing as akin to “an anteater probing into a promising mound of dirt”). Hal also learns of his father’s impending marriage, which fuels much of what comes next. An encounter between father and son early in the novel suggests something is very wrong; gradually, Bratton reveals the extent of Henry’s abuse of his son—which casts both Hal’s own self-abnegating behavior and Henry’s devout Catholicism in a new light. At times witty and at others harrowing, Bratton’s book memorably explores the unexpected depths of its protagonist.
This novel revisits classic literature but never feels beholden to it.
