Henry Henry centers around Hal, son of Henry, Duke of Lancaster. It’s 2014 and Hal, although raised in a privileged life, is struggling in various ways. He’s addicted to drugs, lovelorn and seemingly broke.

We follow Hal through various interactions with friends, including one he’s in love with and with his father.

I found the writing and the structure of this story confusing. First, there are too many uses of the name He ray and Hal. The relationship between Hal and his father Henry has some important history, but it’s murky.

I was confused a lot during the reading of this book, unfortunately, and I didn’t seem to care.

Up front, I should say that I did not finish this novel. A novel updating Shakespearian characters is usually a win for me. However, here, I just didn’t find the protagonist likeable or sympathetic.

Shakespeare's The Henriad has always been intriguing to me and so when I heard about Henry Henry, I had to read it and it was quite different from what I expected. Written beautifully, Allen Bratton writes in a way that makes you feel you are in the same room as the characters; hearing what they're hearing, smell the rooms, taste what's being described, etc. Following Hal Lancaster, the troubled, semi-closeted son of the Duke of Lancaster who believes his sexuality is a sin due to his religious upbringing as he navigates a part of his life along with his relationship with Henry Percy. I think what I like about Henry Henry is that the characters are not really likeable, adding to the disdain and Hal's stagnant journey throughout the novel.

Overall, Henry Henry is an interesting retelling of Shakespeare that blends the Bard's characters and contemporary fiction well. I highly recommend Bratton's novel if you're a fan of Ottessa Moshfegh or want to read a book with unlikable characters.

Thank you, NetGalley and Unnamed Press for sending me an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A fascinating take on a familiar story that brings history to the present, transporting the story of Henry and Falstaff to the modern day. Good dialogue, fun use of characters, and a decent pace make this novel a fun read!

Thank you NetGalley and Unnamed Press for allowing me to read the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review
The writing was absolutely beautiful. I felt like I was in the room with the characters and I could smell and taste everything that was being described.
Hal Lancaster, son of the Duke of Lancaster, he is a troubled character. Mainly, the root of all of his problems is that he is gay and he believes that to be a sin, based on his religious upbringing. He has a troubled relationship with his father, with his siblings. For him the world is grey and very little brings him happiness. That changes when he meets Percy, but even then he perceives his relationship with him to be a sin which puts a strain on it.
It was heartbreaking reading this book because the whole time, I just wanted to give Hal a hug. I'm not saying that he is the best main character out there but he is so desperately flawed that it makes him human.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

this one has me feeling all types of emotions, most of them not good - but i believe that was the point. to sum up my thoughts in one word, i'd say uncomfortable, and that mirrors what the main character felt like this entire book.

the main character, hal, is uncomfortable in his own skin as a gay catholic (and there is a lot of repressed catholic guilt which i actually found was explored well), around his father (who abused him as a child which resulted in a very complicated relationship into his adulthood), feeling any intimacy with men (especially a childhood friend that, throughout the book, he struggled to open up and let in), his siblings despite their constant attempts to make something out of their relationships with him, and at the end of the day, accepting who he is despite that all.

as a self-deprecating and self-medicating person, hal was a culmination of his trauma and at times it was difficult to be in his head as he does come off as an unlikeable character, but as a reader, for me, it was met with empathy. his truest self is never intentionally harmful nor does he seek out to be a vindictive person. he is simply the result of his upbringing and the environment he was raised in. he tried - really tried - and continues to try to be better than what everyone expects of him, of what he expects of himself, and that's commendable in itself, given what he's gone through.

i did enjoy the writing - the dry humor, the one liners, the lucidity to where it's almost painful, all of it was done well. overall, if you like anything queer, messy, and real, this one's for you!

Hal, the future Duke of Lancaster, lives in the shadow of his noble family and expectations for his future but all he wants to do is drink and do drugs and sink into oblivion. Not big on plot, Henry Henry is primarily a character study of Hal as he navigates the environment he exists in and comes to terms with his family and their past and himself. The novel explores a complicated father son relationship as well as a complex family history that hangs heavily over Hal.

I’m not sure I have adequate words to express my experience with this novel. I was absolutely riveted by Hal. The way Bratton portrays the depth of pain, self loathing, emptiness, unworthiness, and lack of feeling or care for anything is so convincingly crafted. Hal comes off as an entitled, spoiled brat throwing his life away. But as the novel progresses Bratton weaves elements into Hal’s character that create a highly nuanced portrait of a human navigating the complex systems and structures that we exist in. The weight of wealth, faith, and family pulls Hal down to the lowest depths; so far down that he is completely and utterly lost and unsure of how to live or survive and has given up on trying. Behind this wall of protection is a traumatized person responding in the only way he can to his experiences and the environment that surrounds him. In so many ways Hal is a deplorable, unlikeable character but the manner in which Bratton conveys the depths of his humanity is masterful. Despite the dark and heavy content there is an arc of redemption and hope. It is a minimal, understated shift and in a way this made it more realistic and impactful.

As someone who doesn’t gravitate to romance, the romance contained in these pages worked for me. Even when it felt like it might veer over the edge of being too cliche and cheesy for my taste, it never did. It always felt like it went just far enough to explore the issues Bratton brings forward in this novel including deep shame and homophobia and feeling worthy of/deserving of love. There is so much depth to this novel I can’t do it justice in a short Instagram review you’ll just need to read it yourself.

This book has been referred to as a queer contemporary take on Shakspeare’s Henriad which I am not familiar with. While I could envision a Shakespearean connection based on my limited exposure to his work, my lack of knowledge did not negatively impact my experience with this novel.

Please check and heed trigger warnings. There are graphic scenes of abuse that can be very difficult to read. I do think the inclusion furthers aspects of the story, especially how those experiencing abuse navigate the experience and grapple with the role they play in what has occurred and who to tell and when to share their stories. I imagine scenes in this novel could be very triggering for some so please take note and read with caution. I have seen other trigger warnings as well so check them if needed.

I am certain this will be one of my top reads this year, highly recommend it.

Thank you @unnamedpress @netgalley for the #gifted ARCs

Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up respecting its ambition

<B>The Publisher Says: <I>Henry Henry</I> is a queer reimagining of Shakespeare's Henriad, transposing the legend of Henry V's wayward youth into 21st-century Britain in the years leading up to the Brexit referendum.</B>

<I>Henry Henry</I> follows Hal Lancaster—22, gay, Catholic—as he spends his first years out of Oxford floating between internships, drinking with his actor friends, struggling through awkward hook-ups, and occasionally going to confession to be absolved of his sins.

When a grouse shooting accident—funny in retrospect—makes a romance out of Hal's rivalry with fumblingly leftist family friend Harry Percy, Hal finds that he wants, for the first time, to be himself. But his father Henry is an Englishman: he will not let his son escape tradition. To save himself, Hal must reckon not only with grief and shame but with the wounds of his family's past.

<B>I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review</B>: So, the plot's not a big mystery...Shakespeare did the set-up half a millennium ago, if you haven't read it that's on you and your life choices...but brings the subtect of queerness into full textual focus.

This will make some homophobic numskulls very angry. Good.

I was sexually abused by my mother the way Hal was by his father. The many shamings and abuses, the cruel holdings-up to those gone by, of Hal as a person by his father; and maybe more importantly as a sexual being by the idiocy of religion; and the nastiness of steadily belittling him, all poured acid into my eyes. The playbook of controlling mechanisms are all right here: These awful things happened to me, too, Hal, and I really, really want to hug you while murderering your father. The ugly shadow, dirty smudgy tobacco-smoky brown-grey, that will always separate you from your deeply belovèd Percy who can, in the miraculous way of one truly and purely loved, make Hal clean again, can't be banished. Not with his abuser and the filthy miasma of their god suspended in Hal's breath and between the red blood cells in his veins.

What worked best, then, was the reality of a psychologically abused son in the grip of a sexually jealous and sociopathic parent who expresses their power by coercing the child into sexual servitude and then blaming the child for not being strong enough to live a normal life. What was not necessarily so easy was the mapping of the story onto Shakespeare's "Henriad." It's been a while since my Shakespeare days, but the whole point of the Henriad wasn't to map out Prince Hal's survivorhood, was it? It was meant to explain how, after his rebellious rageful youth, he snaps into focus when he hears the strumpet shriek of Power. Of course, if you don't know the outline of the Henriad, none of this matters because it will sail past you. Suffice to say that book-Hal is a nasty piece of work (though for a reason), and play-Hal is a nasty piece of work too (though for different ones). The father/son conflicts, the verbal cruelties each inflicts, are all in the plays. The thing that isn't in the plays is Hal's self-awarness, or so I recall. Play-Hal is nasty and abusive to kinder people than he deserves to have around him and then, when he attains Power, he changes; book-Hal is more reflective, more aware that he is in fact wrestling with demons that have warped him and could kill him if he does not get the upper hand.

What that meant to my reading of the story was that I half-hoped there would be some mercy for the lost and the left behind. What it actually meant was the book ended before I got a sense that the story was over and all the threads dangled.

Not my favorite kind of ending. Appropriate to the subject matter. Truthful and completely honest. Just...dissatisfying, a lot like the life it limns for Hal. He is not satisfied; he cannot be satisfied; he can only dimly conjure any awareness that satisfaction could exist but can in no way craft any kind of response to those around him that would result in anyone feeling satisfied. It is, as a novel, bitter and hateful and cruel; but it is beautifully said and spoken in clear, unhistrionic tones.

A very big ask, this read. Go in with your Shakespeare goggles on and come away shocked at what a new generation of response to him has uncovered. Go in unaware of the Henriad and the dangling ends might bother you more. Shakespeare took three plays (four, if we're stuffy about it) to resolve the Lancastrian dynasty's fate. Author Bratton tried to squeeze it into less than four hundred pages so no wonder he wasn't all the way successful.

Fully successful or not, the clarity and honesty about the pain that abuse and hateful religiosity of Hal's world make it a highly rewarding read.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and I think it was beautifully written. I enjoyed how unlikeable the main character was and the struggles Hal went through with navigating his family and daily life gave a good insight. Even though there was little character development and there are a few trigger warnings, I would still recommend giving Henry Henry a read if it is your sort of book.

I really enjoyed this book. The writing is brilliant, it's observational and wry, beautiful without being overbearing. You don't need to be familiar with Shakespeare's Henriad to like this book if you enjoy reading character-driven novels.

After reading the Patrick Melrose books last year, I was looking for something similar and this was that, in more ways than one. The characters felt real and some of the dialogues made me laugh. It balances the humor and sensitive topics well. The revelation of Hal surprised me, but the depiction felt authentic and the complexities of his emotions were handled with care.

It's a book that goes through events, things happen but the pace feels slow, and any growth is minimal. I would've liked a better, more definitive resolution, but even with the not-much-happens ending, it didn't ruin the rest of the book for me. I'll gladly read anything else by Allen Bratton, and I hope to see more.

DNF. While the writing was commendable, it didn't resonate with me. Moreover, the absence of trigger warnings was disappointing.

I found this very compelling - messy, dramatic, painful, compulsive. I enjoyed the first half more and my attention waned a bit towards the end; the pacing could have used some tightening up, but it’s a very accomplished debut from an author whose work I’m excited to follow.

3.5 stars with lots of TW to look into. I usually read sad, messy girl litfic but love that this is a queery messy boy litfic! It was a little long for my taste and there were some uncomfy parts. It was hard for me to relate oftentimes but I still enjoyed our unlikable MMC. I felt really bad for Hal at times and at other times I'm like "what the heck are you doing stop!" There were also some times that this gave me some serious Saltburn vibes. I think this will find its people and will be a favorite for many.

Henry Henry is a beautifully written novel. Its characters were fascinating and well developed. It feels like a modern classic and I will be reading it again to fully get into the story.

I thought of write a negative review because of the lack of trigger warning in a novel so full of triggers. I hope they will write them when the book will be published.
However, I don’t know if I like this book. I love Bratton’s writing, that’s for sure, the book is so wonderful written, but there was a little to much pornography of pain and I don’t like it.
I really appreciate the toxic dynamic between Hal and Harry and the Shakespeare’s references, but I didn’t quite love the story. I’m really sorry.

Henry Henry is a fantastically well-written debut novel that follows Hal Lancaster and his relationships with his family, his romantic interests, and the Catholic church, starting in London 2014. But before we get into the review, this novel has a lot of trigger warnings.

TW: sexual assault, incest, eating disorders, blood, death of AIDS, homophobia.

Despite Hal’s wealth, and really because of it, nothing is going right in his life, and Bratton’s incredible prose immediately draws in and immerses the reader, despite Hal clearly being quite a terrible person. However, any dislike for Hal doesn’t last for long with the incredible empathy and sympathy that are drawn out of the powerful interiority.

His father has been sexually abusing him since he was an adolescent, and created an incredibly strong dissonance between Hal’s sexuality and their longstanding relationship with the Catholic church. This theme resonates throughout the novel, and created a huge takeaway of the complexity of deeply-ingrained, yet harmful childhood beliefs. This all ties in and the tension is elevated as we learn about Richard, Hal’s uncle, who is no longer living but remains as a bone of contention between Hal and his father.

The major highlights of this book for me were Hal’s relationship with his sister Philippa, and his partner, Harry Percy. Without spoiling too much, these character’s foiled and mirrored Hal so, incredibly well, and made me want what Hal wanted, even though I knew it would never happen because change was so impossible for Hal to achieve. There were times where I was disgusted by Hal, and others where I just wanted to give him a big hug, and I was absolutely here for it. He is a deeply flawed person, and he knows it, which I think is something really unique that Bratton does in his writing. It really changes the narrative about how people come at Hal, when they don’t have the leverage of hurting him by saying he’s a bad person.

The ending, I feel was so, so fitting. While the topic turned a little bit from what I thought it would be, it wrapped up so wonderfully, and showed the character development, and showed how hard Hal was trying to fight this deep, painful trauma.

Recommend for: lovers of immersive prose, Shakespeare references, and complex, toxic relationships.

While the writing and developed themes were incredibly compelling, I mostly found reading this to be a chore. I had a difficult time getting into this, I was not really into Hal as a character so I never quite felt motivated to pick the book up.

However, once we got to the incident with Harry Percy, I suddenly felt invested. I loved the charm between these characters, the way their differences and similarities bounced off one another.

But then the energy and momentum of the story kind of fizzled out for me, a lot of the action felt repetitive and I was waiting for a bit more development from these characters.

I did love the connection between Catholicism (and a lot of guilt), Hal’s relationship with his father (complicated, to say the least), the long line of history that tethered this family together, and the Shakespearian-ness of it all. These sentences and craft of it were all well done, so even though the story didn’t totally work for me, the structure of it did.

I have a feeling that this will be a polarizing book people will have opinions about, but if you are a reader that prefers (messy) character-driven novels, enjoyed the Henriad (or maybe even Succession), and are down for some privileged white boy drama, I think this will be a book for you.

Thanks to NetGalley and Unnamed Press for the eARC!

Henry Henry is splendid. Bratton builds a beautiful world of mid-aughts Britain, a protagonist who is deeply alone, and a supporting cast of characters that, well, only Shakespeare himself could rival.

Reading Henry Henry was like slipping into a pond for a midnight swim in the summertime, but the water is far too cold and the ground far too mucky. Everything about this book made me cringe. But I couldn't put it down. I think this novel forces you to take it seriously, from the style of prose to how sadly unlikeable nearly every character is.

I would recommend Henry Henry to all readers who loved Saltburn or any of Brandon Taylor's novels.

This novel is really stylish and fun, beautiful and bouncy prose that covers some serious topics with grace. I haven´t brushed up on my Shakespeare and am fairly certain I remember none of the Henriad but really enjoyed this unique queer book regardless. I especially appreciate the strength of the narrative gaze---these characters are handled with love in so that we see them in their absolute truth, their endearing and horrifying, their humanity.

Henry, Henry has its own magnetism for readers that are already fans of Shakespeare, specifically of the Henriad, of which the novel is highly inspired by. I don't think readers need to know any context of the Henriad going into this story (I didn't know any) although I'm sure the reading experience could be heightened if so. The novel follows Hal's journey through sex, friendship, drugs, etc. Initially the story beats felt like a way to understand Hal's character based on his perception and reaction to his own accountability with these experiences. Without spoiling too much, it's his inner feelings that were most compelling compared to the external, his environment almost feeling like a pigeon hole to getting to Hal's most lucid thoughts that I was looking forward to the book honing in on when it opted to. This would most often be when Hal interacts with his father and Percy. While the other parts of the book are no small matter in importance, by comparison it almost feels like it stifles Hal from expanding beyond what feels a bit cyclical after a while, but perhaps that is a symptom of his character as well: Hal's stubbornness glowing. Overall, at times it felt hard to know Hal, but maybe that was the point, albeit again my inexperience with maybe catching the Henriad references that may have made this novel more enjoyable.