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'We must live in the future we hope to make': a magnificent and daring novel of forbidden love and new ways of living set in 1890s London
Discover Tom Crewe's magnificent debut novel about forbidden desire and the search for freedom in Victorian England...
After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John has finally found a man who returns his feelings. Meanwhile, Henry is convinced that his new unconventional marriage will bring freedom.
United by a shared vision, they begin work on a revolutionary book arguing for the legalisation of homosexuality.
Before it can be published however, Oscar Wilde is arrested and their daring book threatens to throw them, and all around them, into danger. How high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living?
Author: Tom Crewe
Paperback Published 9 April 2024 384 pages
'Beautifully written' Graham Norton
'Subtle, sexy and beautifully crafted' Sarah Waters
'Lavishly imagined' Sunday Times
Read and Recommended by Graeme:
"This superb new debut novel reimagines two real-life historical men - John Addington Symonds and Henry Havelock Ellis - and takes us back to 1890s London when the two were collaborating on a revolutionary book Sexual Inversion. It was an attempt to raise public consciousness and sympathy for homosexuality which was illegal and prosecuted harshly. However their ambition was undone by the Oscar Wilde scandal which hardened society’s views and alarmed many closeted men. The novel’s characters are only loosely based on the real-life men and the author who is an ex-historian has taken some liberties with the facts to weave this fascinating and evocative narrative. The novel opens with a tremendously sexy scene - John Addington is wedged up against another man on a very crowded train and becomes aroused as does the other man - though the clandestine nature of this encounter amplifies the eroticism tenfold. And it is this forbidden quality to sex and desire which supercharges the eroticism that runs through the book. There are many memorable scenes, in particular one when John’s lover Frank leads him outside his house into a very dense fog that cloaks the street. The two men are hidden by the fog and they kiss openly and defiantly in the street. The characters are so evocatively created, even the more secondary characters such as John’s wife Catherine and we get insight and sympathy into her unfortunate situation of being married to a gay man who itches for more freedom. Female and lesbian readers will also find substance in the novel - Henry’s wife Edith advocates publicly on the rights for woman, while in private conducts a love affair with a woman. The historical period captured in The New Life is utterly fascinating and portrayed with impeccable atmosphere and an expert eye to historical detail, yet it is all this pent-up, clandestine sexual longing that truly heightens the narrative into something very memorable and compelling for the reader."