Nova Scotia House. Charlie Porter

The first characteristic to be noted of this novel is the remarkably distinctive prose style – it’s repetitive/twitchy/nervous. This sounds as if could be pretentious/ and/or irritating. However, once one accepts and gets used to it, surprisingly, this is not the case. This style is also central in conveying the almost obsessive love between Jerry and the narrator. At times this obsession seems to run only in 0ne direction, but then that direction changes -or this obsessive love appears as mutual. It’s a fine, and I think, original, demonstration of how style and content are intimately related and how one characteristic fuels/feeds/reflects on the other.

Chapter 8, the Evengate meeting and protest was a fantastic, dramatic and movingly powerful scene. It definitely had the ring of authenticity.

The use of AID quilt at the end is VERY effective. This memorial was made deeply personal, which is what it, was/is all about. When I saw on Mall in DC many years ago, the sheer scale tended to overwhelm and almost make one forget that each panel is an intimate life and story of a relationship.

The final chapter was wonderful; totally convincing in terms of action and emotional situation. I had been wondering how it would (could?) be concluded but this worked superbly. It was emphatically NOT a simple ‘he’s finally moved on’ (although that element is necessarily there) but one felt that the spirit of Jerry and what he taught the narrator was made remarkably clear and powerful. For much of the time, the narrator does not realise what he is learning and gaining, perhaps a necessary characteristic of his youth and naivety, but by the end, I think he is beginning to understand.