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First, let me paint a picture for you of my in-person book-club meetings. Well, the only thing you really need to know is that they’re… in-person, which means when you are discussing the content of the book you have to say things out loud to other people who are actually in the same room as you. In the case of Tom Crewe’s The New Life, that might mean you have to discuss a significant masturbation sequence, and then your lovely book club members, some of whom are in their seventies and eighties, might reply “yes, but which one?”
The New Life might be the most descriptive book (penis-wise) that our groups have read in a long time, but with good reason. This is a tender and thought-provoking novel about homosexuality in Victorian England, here to remind us that things we take for granted came at a price for those before us. That we should always strive for progression and change, but that it comes at a cost for the first to speak up. It’s scary that hearts can be criminalised, scarier still, that the civilised world can regress at any moment, and that we all remain bound to the whims of the people who make up the law. This is a historical novel, but its message and themes are as relevant today as they ever could be. If you’ve read The New Life this month, let’s chat in the comments.
What I liked best about the book was the