| Summary |
In this powerful, visceral novel about love, sex, and the struggle for a better world, two men collaborate on a book in defense of homosexuality, then a crimerisking their old lives in the process. In the summer of 1894, John Addington and Henry Ellis begin writing a book arguing that what they call zinversion,y or homosexuality, is a natural, harmless variation of human sexuality. Though they have never met, John and Henry both live in London with their wives, Catherine and Edith, and in each marriage there is a third party: John has a lover, a working class man named Frank, and Edith spends almost as much time with her friend Angelica as she does with Henry. John and Catherine have three grown daughters and a long, settled marriage, over the course of which Catherine has tried to accept her husbands sexuality and her own role in life; Henry and Ediths marriage is intended to be a revolution in itself, an intellectual partnership that dismantles the traditional understanding of what matrimony means. Shortly before the book is to be published, Oscar Wilde is arrested. John and Henry must decide whether to go on, risking social ostracism and imprisonment, or to give up the project for their own safety and the safety of the people they love. Is this the right moment to advance their cause? Is publishing bravery or foolishness? And what price is too high to pay for a new way of living? |
| Subject |
Homosexuality -- Fiction.
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Gay men -- Fiction.
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Gay people -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction.
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Closeted gay people -- Fiction.
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Authors -- Fiction.
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Marriage -- Fiction.
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London (England) -- 19th century -- Social conditions -- Fiction.
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| Genre |
Historical fiction.
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Novels.
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| ISBN |
9781668000830
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1668000830
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