Unabridged Audiobook
A lavender tale of corduroy and crushed velvet, a review of A Boy in the Rain by Sebastian Dureaux-Russell, 4/20/24 From first glimpse of the self-portrait of John Singer Sargent that graces the cover of Stephanie Cowell’s latest great novel, A Boy in the Rain, you are immediately drawn into this Edwardian era romance set inside a farmhouse in Forest’s End, Nottinghamshire. Our two star-crossed lovers are Robbie; artist and teenage orphan, banished by his uncle into a vicarage, and Anton; a socialist and former student of the vicar, whose political ambitions were crushed by his father and sleepwalks though life employed as a bank-teller stuck in a loveless marriage. In the era of London’s Gross Indecency Laws (that would take down Oscar Wilde and his undercover lover Bosie) these men are keeping their love well under wraps while outside men are risking sex and reputations in public rest rooms and dark alleyways. You only want these two lovers to remain ensconced in their warm, earthy retreat, where you can inhale the musk of the place, grab a novel from a dusty shelf and settle into a well-worn leather club chair to read by the firelight … But Anton is dutiful and exactly the dark riddle of a man that gay youth longs to solve but is ultimately dismissed by because he reminds the man of what he could’ve been – Anton rejects Robbie into a dirty city where he becomes a true starving artist who quickly finds himself attacked and left for dead by the sirs and lords in the hierarchy of London society. Somehow Robbie survives, returns to art school, becomes the patron of Anton’s ex-wife, and rises as portraiture artist to the rich and famous. Re-united, briefly, Anton’s passion and politics are revived through his rediscovered love of Robbie. But dare they risk imprisonment and be sentenced to two years hard labor? “Men were beautiful things, wasn’t it natural to touch a beautiful thing?” The answer to that question is left to the reader’s imagination and I placed them, older, back in the farmhouse, retired artist and politician, surrounded by their accolades, sitting together by the fireside.
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