Ernest Barteldes: This review was originally published in Gay Today (Vol. VI, Issue 246). It is reprinted with permission from www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com online.
Around The Houses is a novel about a community in South London which is composed of several characters whose lives are intertwined as in many neighborhoods around the world. At the center of the plot is Anna, a pregnant gay woman who, although having come out to herself, still has uncertainities about being open about her sexual orientation to others. Her parents don't know about her relationship with her partner, and at work she not only hides it, but also the fact that she is a mother-to-be.
Anna's partner, Cass, is the member of an alternative co-op that runs “The Cosmic Cafe”, which serves a strictly vegetarian menu.Unlike Anna, she has been out for years and wears a “dyke power” t-shirt as she goes about her everyday business. The central characters have a number of assorted friends who are either living in some conflict or adjusting to a radical change in life.
Ruby, for example, is a sex-crazed woman in her late thirties with a thing for younger men. At the beginning of the novel, she and her young lover are ending their relationship after a night of sex. As he leaves, she already has her eye on Johnnie, a young black man who lives in a student house across the street from her own. Also living in the student house is Shirley, a suburban young lady who is leaving her ultra-protective home in Finley to go to school in London. Her father, Gordon, is a conservative Brit who cringes when he enters the Cosmic Cafe after driving his daughter to town, learning from her that there is no meat on the menu:
‘It's a vegetarian cafe, Dad.'
‘Well, you can have my vegetables'.
‘No, Dad, I mean they don't eat meat'
He was incredulous.
‘Well, what do they eat, then?' This was directed rather aggressively en masse to the other customers. Some of them looked round.
‘Pretend meat.'
Shirley was saved from her father's loud opinions on this idiocy by her mother's intervention. Shirley's mom, Pearl, is a bright woman trapped in a marriage that has long fizzled, and her daughter's move to London changes the way she sees life as she realizes that she's been living a lie. In the meantime, Gordon is oblivious to that as he barely lifts his head from the newspaper. As the novel progresses, the family will go through dramatic changes in their lives during the four months that the plot covers.
Also in the neighborhood is Andy, a close friend of Anna and Cass. He is a gay man who is not only Anna's sperm donor, but also a fully supportive and participating “third member” of their happy family. He is struggling in a relationship with Tony, an Italian man who had left him before but who now is coming back to Tony's life—a situation that the two women disapprove of, due to Tony's lack of commitment to Andy.
Around The Houses was written by Amanda Boulter, a professor of creative writing at King Alfred's College in Winchester. She is a gay woman herself, with children of her own. “Around the Houses started off as a bit of a joke really”, she told 3 A.M. Magazine. “Me and my partner, I'd read it to her and it grew from there. Suddenly I had ten chapters so I wondered whether I should send it to somebody.”
Although the central characters in the novel are homosexual, I don't believe that this book would qualify as G & L literature, for there is a lot more to it than gay issues. For instance, there is the mid-life crisis experienced by Shirley's parents—most poignantly her mother—and several childhood issues which Ruby is reluctant to work out. Sure, there are some veiled “homophobic villains”, such as Anna's employers (which is one of the reasons why she is reluctant to come out completely) and specially Trev, an Australian co-worker of Anna's who claims to have traveled around the whole world (to tell more about him would reveal much of the plotline, so let's leave it at that).
As the novel progresses, life in the neighborhood faces everyday conflicts. The Cosmic Cafe is going broke, and they desperately need help which will predictably come but through a completely unexpected channel. Shirley slowly adapts to life on her own and grows as she watches her parents' marriage crisis from an unsafe distance. Anna, in the meantime, begins to realize who she is and begins to acknowledge the choices she has made, slowly becoming a much more confident woman and expectant mother. In the meantime, Andy tries to work out his relationship with Tony while adjusting to the reality of fatherhood.
Although I didn't quite like the ending, I found Around The Houses quite a satisfying piece of reading which I can fully recommend to readers who enjoy novels that deal with relationships, whether they are conventional or not.
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