another writer: Alexis Hall

This is a post about someone else’s books.

I discovered Alexis Hall this year, thanks to an advance review (on Smart Bitches Trashy Books) of his new book ‘Boyfriend Material’ (which: LOVE). A few key things about ‘Alexis Hall:’

1. it’s a pseudonym;

2. the pronouns on his website are he/him, so that’s what I’m using;

3. I know absolutely nothing about the real person, and I haven’t yet taken time to read the entirety of his blog, so I’m not going to make too many assumptions, but I think I would love him IRL, and:

4. So far everything I’ve read is deeply queer, and I mean that in a good way. The characters in these books live on a LGBTQNA spectrum.

Alexis (I will call him that for brevity henceforth) writes contemporary romance and paranormal. So far I’ve only read the contemporary romances. I might have dug into the other stuff already except I keep re-reading the romances. There are two major collections.

One is what I’ve seen described as ‘gay Fifty Shades.’ I can’t fully speak to that because I haven’t read ‘Fifty Shades.’ (I tried, for five minutes. Life is too short.) Suffice to say the Arden St. Ives trilogy is about an aspiring lifestyle journalist fresh out of university who falls in love with a billionaire. The course of true love does not run smooth. There is a very evil person involved; there is a loving but very misguided person involved; there is wonderful family and horrible family and found family. I adore these books.

The other is a loosely-connected group of titles (somewhat like my own L.A. Stories) gathered under the heading Spires. That’s a reference to Oxford University, which forms one of the connections. What, to me, is special about the Spires books?

1. Alexis gambols in a garden of wordplay. He is overtly and delightedly literate. Even his youngest character (Toby, ‘For Real’) is a reader who understands writing and language, which is something I appreciate perhaps particularly because, like Toby, I frequently employ variations on the word ‘fuck.’ Use of profanity, in other words, is not used to denote, nor understood by the characters to denote, poor communication skills or low intellect. (Nor is use of dialect.)

2. These books are all, not only by my own assessment but according to a post on Alexis’ blog https://quicunquevult.com/ about loss. Experiencing it, recovering from it, or - when that’s not genuinely possible, as in the simply gorgeous ‘Glitterland’ - living with it. Loss is not a theme I’ve sought out in Books To Read, but it’s a theme that comes up quite frequently in Books I Write. (That is a realization I’ve had in hindsight, looking back at 40+ titles.)

3. At least one contains subject matter I’d never voluntarily picked up before (‘For Real,’ BDSM), but they are written with such attention to the details of character (always the most important thing, for me, in a piece of fiction) and such do-what-it-takes tenacity in getting through the characters’ conflicts (no easily-resolved issues here; grief is grief and great sex won’t cure it) that they reward re-reading. And that is a key, for me, as a reader.

There are nearly a thousand books in my Kindle library; at any given time there are 80 or 90 downloaded to my device and waiting to be read. Sometimes I buy books (e.g. ‘Don Quixote’) out of a feeling of obligation (I have a Being-A-Writer reason for wanting to read that thing but it is LONG and it is deeply strange) or because they were on sale and/or things I always wanted to read (various historical or biographical or literary things) but for the most part I buy books I want to read immediately. At the moment ten things on my device are Alexis Hall books I’ve already read, more than once, and will soon read again.

So. Specifics about the Spires titles. Where does loss come into it? SPOILERS ABOUND:

1. Waiting for the Flood - this is a novella set over the course of a few days during a (wait for it) flood in Oxford. The MCs are Edwin, a book conservator employed by the university, and Adam, a civil engineer. Edwin is a person whose emotional life has been pinned to the wall by being left. He does not think he’s ready to love again. Well, this is a romance, so what do you think? We don’t get a lot of details on Edwin’s breakup with the artist Marius. The story is entirely from Edwin’s POV and this is years after the breakup. So his POV is not entirely reliable. All we know is he thought they were happy, but Marius left, fairly abruptly and not long after they bought a house together. BIG LOSS, unexplained in any meaningful way; it is still an open wound. And then there’s Adam, who has his own wounds but who is ready and willing to love. Who is patient, and kind, and who is willing to accept an apology and a kiss because to him moving forward is simply the thing to do. Adam is a lovely, lovely man.

2. Glitterland - oh boy. This book is about Ash, a novelist with bipolar depression and clinical anxiety, and Darian, an ill-educated (and not deep-thinking) model with a heart of gold. I have never before read anything written from the POV of someone with severe mental illness. (My own depression/anxiety issues are situational and hormonal.) Ash has literally lost his entire future, or at least the future he envisioned and expected as a gifted adolescent. He’s spent time institutionalized, has made at least one sincere effort to kill himself, and will never be ‘well.’ Darian loves him, almost immediately. Darian ‘speaks’ with a heavy dialect that some readers find very distracting; I didn’t have an issue with it. He is presented with so much respect, his dignity and worth are never in doubt. His lack of vocabulary and limited cultural frame of reference make people assume he is stupid, but he actually isn’t. He’s resourceful, quick-witted, methodical and disciplined about the career he wants. That isn’t, by the way, explicated. There aren’t characters standing to the side going ‘but look how hard he works.’ It’s a thing Ash discovers in the course of understanding that he has a right to be as happy as his illness allows him to be - and also that it is possible for someone to genuinely love him, illness and all. I love this book.

3. Pansies - a novel set mostly in northeast England, which means dialect comes into play again, and which again I don’t mind. There is serious conflict in this one, stemming from two things. The first is that MC Alfie is a big strong guy who was a big strong thought-he-was-straight kid and who (in combination with his hooligan friends) mercilessly bullied MC Fen in school. Alfie meets Fen again when they are thirty, where the story begins, and doesn’t even recognize his erstwhile victim. Fen recognizes Alfie. There is a lot of undertow. The second source of conflict is the fact that Fen is back in their hometown, having left (maybe temporarily) a career as a theatrical lighting designer, following the death of his mother. He’s trying to keep her flower shop going for Reasons. Alfie is only there for a friend’s wedding, until he picks up Fen at a bar, after which he has a HOLY F**K moment. Or rather, a series of those. Alfie has only known he is gay for a couple of years; is still in the process of coming out; and is trying to patch together some sense of who he is now. So here, the loss is multiplied. Fen has lost his mother; he’s lost (at least temporarily) his career; he’s lost the man he was living with, who doesn’t want to cope with the other things. And he’s had to go back to a town full of miserable memories that he can’t escape, not least because the source of a lot of those memories is standing in front of him. Alfie, meanwhile, has found financial success in London - he’s an investment banker - but has lost his sense of self. He’s also lost nearly all the relationships he had growing up. It’s not so much that family and friends have turned their backs on him as that none of them know how to relate to him. His brother’s take on things isn’t spelled out, but his parents don’t understand or welcome the new reality. The most welcoming people he re-encounters are the owner of a curry shop (who treats Fen every bit as well as he’s treated Alfie’s female dates in the past) and Alfie’s best friend. Though in that case ‘welcoming’ includes banter that is right on the edge of mean. Well, that’s how guys relate to each other; Alfie gets it, because he’s not an idiot; but it still hurts.

4. For Real - last but not least. This book is about a dom-sub relationship, which is something I barely understand. I actually had to do some research on it, to see if what I was understanding from the novel (a lot is spelled out, but a lot is not) was accurate for people in BDSM relationships IRL. And obviously, the internet =/= the whole truth, but if one can find trustworthy medical information (and one can) then one can also find trustworthy guidelines to nonconforming lifestyles. ANYWAY, 19-year-old dom Toby meets 38-year-old sub Laurie at a club and they have an instant connection, but there are Huge Hurdles beginning with the age difference. That is a persistent issue, one not readily solved by being in love. Life experience is not trivial. Laurie is single because the partner he loved for ten years left him, and he is still scarred by that (in more than one way, as we learn late in the book). Another loop of loss: Toby has dropped out of university for Reasons. He had a vision of the future, which is gone now because that future was based on having a degree; he hasn’t yet formed a new vision. In the course of the book he sustains yet another loss, with the death of his great-grandfather. And while he is intelligent and well-read, he is also nineteen. That life-experience thing comes into play. I remember being nineteen, intelligent and well-read. I was furious, frustrated, confused, and insecure just like Toby. Was I attracted to older partners? I most definitely was. So I can really relate to that character even though the rest of his background and situation is nothing like mine. A turning point in this book is when Laurie takes Toby to Oxford for a dinner at his old college. He learns a lot about Toby here; this is the first time he’s seen his lover in company, and he suddenly realizes that the age difference is not all that significant. Toby holds his own. He can talk to Laurie’s peers. And he can give Laurie something that he hasn’t had for a very long time: a sense of possibility.

There is one more title in the Spires series that is available only to newsletter subscribers. Obviously I subscribed so I could get it. ‘In Vino’ is a short story about Jasper, one of the men in Laurie’s old college. He is A MESS. It’s an emotionally violent story about inappropriate sex and alcoholism and (again) loss.

There are a lot of characters in the Spires series as well as in the Arden St. Ives books who I’d like to see again. I would like a sequel to ‘Boyfriend Material’ immediately. I will continue re-reading these books until there are new ones.

Will I read everything else Alexis Hall publishes? Most definitely.