Jan 21

Jan 21 The New Life

Author: Tom Crewe
Publisher: Scribner
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Two Victorian marriages, two dangerous love affairs, one extraordinary partnership . . .

London, 1894. After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John Addington, married to Catherine, has met Frank, a working-class printer.

Meanwhile Henry Ellis's wife Edith has fallen in love with Angelica — and Angelica wants Edith all to herself.

When in 1894 John and Henry decide to write a revolutionary book together, intended to challenge convention and the law, they are both caught in relationships stalked by guilt and shame. Yet they share a vision of a better world, one that will expand possibilities for men and women everywhere.

Their daring book threatens to throw John and Henry, and all those around them, into danger. How far should they go to win personal freedoms? And how high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living?

TL;DR Review

The New Life is a well-written and deeply emotional novel about experiences of queerness in late-1800s London. I loved it.

For you if: You like deeply imagined characters who make questionable choices.

Not for you if: You don’t like sexual content or prose occasionally on the flowery side.

Full Review

I picked up The New Life after seeing it on a few most-anticipated lists for 2023, and wowza, am I glad I did! What a well-written, deeply emotional novel.

The book takes place in London in the late 1800s Two men have teamed up to write a book making a scientific argument against the criminalization of homosexuality. John is a closeted, married gay man who begins a passionate affair with a man from a different social class. Henry is a quiet but prolific proponent of “the new life,” a future where marriage is redefined. He’s married to a woman from the same movement, and theirs is anything but a traditional marriage. The book they’re writing is going well, until Oscar Wilde’s sodomy trial happens — when taking a stand goes from feeling clear and right to questionable and risky.

One thing I’ll say right off the bat is that this book has a lot of sexual content — from literally the first page. But there’s a big difference between sex for sex’s sake, and what Crewe does here, which is use it to deepen our understanding of these characters and what motivates them. Honestly, I found it impressive.

I also thought that Crewe wrote confrontation scenes in a really expert way. Whenever the characters were in direct conflict, we got so much insight into their psyches, but in a way that felt like we were learning about them just as they were learning about themselves. It was particularly heart-wrenching and just very well done.

I will say that the prose can be flowery at times. I happen to like that, but I know it’s not for everyone. All in all, I found this to be a really excellent novel about queerness and sexual exploration, plus the tension between being true to yourself and the unintended consequences on those around you.

Please read this!