Henry Henry is dark and difficult and funnier than it has any right to be. I understand exactly why Brandon Taylor, who is easily one of my favourite writers, felt the need to acquire this book. Bratton's writing is precise, and every character and setting is clearly rendered, no matter how much or little time we spend with them on the page. Hal as a protagonist is immediately frustrating but his inner world is so developed that it feels impossible to misunderstand him, and as the book goes on, the frustration shifts progessively toward deep sadness. A few of Bratton's insights into Hal really moved me. I found the resolution both hopeful and disappointing, but I will absolutely be looking out for what Bratton writes next.

To summarize: this was brilliant and extremely dark and sad and funny and frustrating.

If you're someone who benefits from content warnings before reading things, I highly suggest you seek them out for this work, because the description doesn't highlight some of the key subject matter of the novel.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

I can definitely appreciate the gorgeous prose and the inventiveness of this retelling. Unfortunately it was not for me, I found it all too depressing and hard to get through. Objectively, I was able to see where the humour and irony were woven through the story but wasn't able to really experience it because the characters made me too sad.

I'm not sure I'm the audience for this book, but if you're a Shakespeare buff and enjoy unlikable characters, this may be for you!

You'll go through all the emotions and might come out a bit exhausted and a little haunted.

The writing is pretty dense and I was hoping for a little more character evolution.

I was not engaged most of the time, and found it pretty hard to get through, perhaps due to its constant-downer-feel.

If trigger warnings concern you, def check those out.

Unfortunately this one wasn't for me.

I was so excited for this book. I remember loving Henry IV when I read them 10-ish years ago, and I was so keen for a queer modern take on that story.

Unfortunately, after the first chapter, things went rapidly downhill for me. The self-loathing, the constant substance abuse, the way Hal treated those around him, was all just too much for me. I can’t say it’s necessarily an unfaithful adaption but the vibe felt off for me personally.

I did enjoy the author’s writing style though and would give his next book a go!

dnf—unfortunately this wasn’t for me. but nevertheless, I thank and appreciate being approved for this arc.

thank you to netgalley for the arc!

this was a miserable slog of a book. perhaps i would've liked it more if i was more familiar with shakespeare's henriad, but i don't think it would've made much of a difference - i suspect the plays have like, a narrative. character development. i love uncomfortable, visceral descriptions of sex and food in books, but that can't be all a book is. the dialogue was awful. many of the chapters end abruptly, and while this could've been a deliberate stylistic choice, i think it's just because the author couldn't figure out how to successfully end those chapters, or tie them together cohesively. there were also some weird punctuation/formatting issues with the dialogue, but i suspect that had more to do with it being an uncorrected review copy.

not my cup of tea, sadly. it gave me so many a little life-y vibes that i simply could not bring myself to enjoy it.

Maybe this is just because of a reading slump I'm in, but I found this book to be very, very slow and boring at some times. I love retellings, but I just couldn't get into this one. I want to retry it in the future because I was so looking forward to this book but for now it was one that was pretty disappointing for me

Henry Henry is loosely-based on Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1 and 2. It follows familiar characters in a contemporary setting, albeit having Hal be the heir to the title of Duke of York instead of the King of England. While it is not necessary to know anything about English history or the plays Henry Henry is based on, it adds to the experience. I particularly enjoyed having some of the dialogues in form of text messages to mimic play scripts, the jokes at the expense of Falstaff (who is most like his version in Merry Wives of Windsor) and the fact that the Yorks couldn't be in line to the throne because they're Catholic. There were so many aspects of the plot that had me question what I knew about the original story, and however disturbing the relationship between Henry IV and Prince Hal is in this version, it makes sense.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the novel is how queer it is, showcasing a myriad of queer experiences, including online dating, the legacy of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the dangers of suppressed desires. I also appreciated having the character of Richard II getting more attention. He is often overlooked by Shakespeare fans and scholars, but I personally always loved that play and him as a character.

Henry Henry is an incredible achievement for a debut novel. Allen Bratton's writing style and use of words is razor-sharp while being inviting, giving just enough information to keep the reader at the edge of their seat throughout.

One of the things that reminded me of Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel and made me laugh is how defeating it is not to be able to name your own characters. The fact that four major characters are called "Henry" and are all referred to in the same paragraph at one point is both a reader's and a writer's nightmare, but Bratton pulls it out impeccably. This was by far the best book I read so far this year. I can't wait for it to find it's readers and sky launch Allen Bratton's career.

Loosely based on Shakespeare's Henriad, Henry Henry is a queer retelling of the struggle between legacy and identity, history and modernity. I wanted to love this book more than I did - there were some compelling scenes and moments of introspective and lucid prose, but the book felt like it was trodding through the muck with no particular direction in mind. I wonder how adapting theatre (again, very loosely) into a novel loses so much of the driving action of the stage plays? The book picked up around halfway through and became an entertaining read, but not much beyond that.

messy. lit fic with a queer, MMC — usually i'm all about the messy girlies but the messy dudes need some appreciation, too.

this is a retelling of shakespeare's henriad, which i have not read, so i have nothing to base this on.

when it comes to henry henry, i think this will either work for you or it won't (although to be fair, i'm somewhere in the middle). our MC is unlikeable and messy, which he's supposed to be. he's young and makes questionable decisions (but who doesn't at 22) and as a reader it's always easy to yell "what are you doing???" when a character is making poor choices.

but that's the point, right? our MC has a lot to figure out and he has a lot of repressed catholic guilt, which i honestly can't imagine how difficult it must be.

at a glance, this was a novel that first truly intrigued me bc the premise sounded right up my alley, but ultimately i had a hard time wanting to pick it up and didn't feel like there was any growth in the character's story.

i would consider giving it another try in the future and read other work by this author. thank you to the publisher for the eARC.

I first learned about this book through Brandon Taylor’s twitter, as he’s the one who picked it up for publishing. To say I was excited would be an understatement—Hal/Henry V is one my favourite characters in all of Shakespeare, a source of neverending delight and fascination for me, and to see him being tackled by a writer whose ability with language was admired by someone as sharp and eloquent as Taylor? Consider me sold.

Now, I wonder if that initially burst of excitement gave me too-high expectations, or if this is simply a case of “I wouldn’t have done it that way” about a character I love so deeply. To be objective: this is a gorgeously, incisively-written and deeply insightful character study. It is wry, and dry, and sharp as a tack, reminding me very much of satirical literary novels from a slightly older era—there’s a hint of Amis to it, a hint of Hollinghurst, even a hint of Waugh. What it reminds me most of by far, though, is Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels.

So, Bratton is working in a specific literary vein, in a tradition of dry, well-educated, insightful-yet-removed male British authors. I don’t fault him that at all; the best of his prose stands up amongst the best of theirs, as does his wit and enjoyable human cruelty (see, for instance, some of the parries between Henry and Percy). He does, too, an excellent job of bringing you back down to earth in brutal scenes describing Henry’s inner torment. This may not be the sort of book that is fashionable in our current moment of wanting good character who do good things that we can feel good about reading, but it is a very, very good book, and that is far more important to me.

Where the novel falls down slightly for me—and I don’t think this will be a problem for all readers—is in it being so emphatically a retelling of Shakespeare’s Henry. I understand why Bratton changes what he does, particularly as it’s a modern adaptation. I even understand bringing in the pain of sexual abuse to heighten Henry’s anguish and complicated relationship with his father in an era that does not, cannot understand what the weight of the crown would have meant to the Elizabethans. What I don’t love is how static Henry remains throughout the novel. I don’t need for it to have a happy ending, but Hal/Henry V is famously one of Shakespeare’s most dynamic and hard to pin down characters, perhaps only second to Hamlet. The force of his personality is such that the four-play saga he appears in is called the Henriad despite him not even being present in the first play. And here, though Henry is vividly painted and deeply realized, I found myself missing some of that force.

On the whole, however, this is an incredible—and incredibly written—novel that I look forward to returning to again and again, and which makes me very excited to see what else Bratton will write.

The book was engaging enough, and the author certainly has a way of writing.

However, I struggled with reading this, if I'm honest. The language was slightly confusing and the dialogue between the characters was stilted at times, which left me unsatisfied.

A modernized Shakespeare's Henriad, moved to the years leading to Brexit.

It's been awhile since I read Henriad, but I vaguely remember it was about Henry V's wild youth. This Henry aka Hal Lancaster is another lost young man, struggling to deal with his sexuality, his family, expectations and love. He's incredibly unlikable, but...what young man in his 20's isn't?

I do struggle with this a bit as Henriad showed up growth; it showed Henry V turning into the man that he was. This Henry is a lost little boy and needs severe therapy.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a review copy of HENRY HENRY by Allen Bratton. Because I wanted to offer a fair review, I kept reading even though around the 33% mark I had an urge to DNF.

I really wanted to enjoy this novel more, being a queer twist on Shakespeare (the Henriad series of plays), set in England (one of my favorite settings for novels). The plot focuses on Hal Lancaster, son and heir to Henry, Duke of Lancaster. Recently graduated from college, Hal floats between friendships, hookups, almost-loves, and drug-fueled benders in search of his purpose in the face of a lifetime of sexual and emotional abuse (trigger warnings abound).

Though based on the classics, this is one of those contemporary novels that relies on the atmosphere of drugs and sex and shock value for its “punch,” but which neglects its characters’ inner lives as a result. Though we as readers obviously feel Hal’s pain because of his experiences, especially with his father Henry (perhaps the closest to a fully-developed supporting character), we don’t get enough insight into his inner life for the book’s events to truly have emotional weight.

*spoiler* When Hal and one of his peers come together and form an unlikely bond, my affection for both Hal and this book rose accordingly. But unfortunately, this subplot is never properly resolved or explored.

I enjoyed some of the writing in this book, and reading it felt conversational enough that I always had my bearings as a reader within the world of the novel. I just wish that, in terms of what was there in that world, there was a little more there there, to borrow the echo effect of the novel’s title.

DNF around 25%. I was excited for a queer Shakespeare retelling but it just didn’t capture me and I honestly found it a struggle to pick this up over other books in was excited about. I would give another book by the author a chance though.

I know this is a retelling, but I've never actually read the originals and this was something I surprisingly did enjoy. Was very sad for me at some points and I felt very badly for the main character throughout the book.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

For a debut novel, this was simply okay.
(I don’t know anything about The Henriad so my review will be based only on my experiences with the actual novel).

My main problem with this book is the overly used of the word “said” in dialogues. “[Character] said…” and “said [character].” And because of that, 90% of the time I was irking.
The prose of the author is actually good if I decide to ignore and count how many times the word: “said” is in the novel.
On the first 100 pages I was actually doubtful of the author’s prose but it got better towards the middle-end.
Sometimes it became tedious, sometimes entertaining, sometimes dragging it to the point I felt lost.

(There was also a moment where a new character appeared OUT OF NOWHERE -and without previous presentation and interaction- on the first chapters and I was wondering “who tf is she? Was she there since the previous chapter?!” Maybe it was just me getting lost).

When it comes to character building and development… I feel it lacked something.
To my perception, the romance was deficient.
I couldn’t understand the attraction between the characters without going deeply into their relationship before becoming an official couple therefore causing me feel the lack of chemistry (and as we advance into the story, most of the relationship’s interactions are just pure erotica).
The development of characters was sort of a straight line for me. A midget of growth and that’s it.
Also found it interesting that the father was mostly referred by his name, Henry, almost all of the time in the novel. At some point I thought that he was another character the same age as Hal, the main character.

The next problem I will say it’s of my own personal taste: I think the novel would’ve been better if it was written in the 1st person. I have a feeling that using the 3rd person made me feel very disconnected with the characters.
Not to say that there aren’t good 3rd person books in which you can feel the character(s) but this one, specifically, needed more of the firsthand experience of the main character and tell us how does it feel… Specially how the main character is… Would be interesting to dive into his psyche.

Now, for the novel in its entirety… I would say it was pretty much just an okay. The interesting parts for me were mostly the backstory of the father and the whole Richard situation and the use of religious references.

The end made me just say: “oh, okay then. Bye.” Nothing impressive. So I’m guessing the only part worth to digest was the middle nearing to the end of the novel.

There’s no doubt that the author has talent in writing. It just needs more practice.
Will I read his future works? No.
Maybe in a couple of years. Who knows?

My hope that The Henriad could be made into something palatable has been let down by Henry Henry. A queer retelling of this Shakespearian collection is an ambitious task that, with more editing and time, could have been well-done. I DNF'd about halfway due to the story's pacing and my lack of enthusiasm for any character other than Percy. Bratton's creative endeavor and beautiful literary prose is something to be marveled at despite the lack of satisfaction the story left me with. I'd love to see an original concept from him.

Reading this book feels like constantly bracing for impact. Hal Lancaster is the son of a duke who is constantly making self-destructive choices while he skirts his responsibilities. It’s like he’s driving a car at full speed, running red lights. Soon enough, we find out what he’s running from. A really stunning debut novel.