A few years ago, Philip Pullman wrote that he had grown so irritated by novels written in the present tense that he refused to read them any more. Personally, I don’t see the harm, but then we all have our pet peeves when it comes to contemporary fiction. Mine is the habit of naming characters solely by an initial. Anthony Shapland is guilty of this offence in his debut, where two men, B and M, begin working and living together in M’s hardware store, leading to a sexual relationship that neither had anticipated.
A Room Above a Shop is a short book, written in clipped phrases and tightly constructed paragraphs, reminiscent of the equally controlled novellas of Max Porter. The central pair are determinedly taciturn, moving through the day without much comment, but finding solace in each other at night.
Shapland writes with a sense of the poetic. Eschewing a barber, the men use clippers on each other, describing “thick fine hair (that) cuts like wheatstalk” and bristles that “drop to the floor with the hush of snow”.
B’s growing frustration that M will not allow their relationship to become public becomes central, but what is he to do? Leave and return to unhappy solitude? “We cannot say a word,” M insists, “we can’t or this stops working.” When a wedding invitation arrives, “an impossible plus-one”, it leaves B feeling “unwhole and separate”, a throwback to a period in gay history when subterfuge was necessary. “We can at least walk down the club side by side,” B mutters in disappointment. “It’s not like I wan’ to hold your hand.”
This is a rather sad novel that, for me, recalls two beautiful works of art: Francis Lee’s 2017 film, God’s Own Country, where a young farmer and a migrant worker must conceal their romance in a brutally masculine environment, and George Michael’s exquisite My Mother Had a Brother, where the songwriter recalls the life of an uncle unable to come out because of the prejudices of the time. It takes a talented writer to create something memorable in 20,000 words so I’m willing to overlook Shapland’s refusal to name his characters if he continues to produce work as potent as this.
