"Henry Henry" by Allen Bratton is the first novel that renown author Brandon Taylor acquired as an editor for unnamed press. When I read this at the beginning of my manuscript, I knew that it would provoke distinct feelings in me, much like Taylor's "Real Life" and "Filthy Animals" did.
If you are a fan or an admirer of writers such as Taylor, Bryan Washington and Garth Greenwell, then this is a novel that will hit all your spots.
However, it did not quite live up to my own expectations.

"Henry Henry" was conceived as a loose retelling of Shakespeare's "The Henriad", which was focused on Henry V's journey through Great Britain, done in a modern London just before the Brexit referendum.
Bratton's writing is concise, straightforward and as vulgar and down to earth as you would expect a Brayn Washington book to be. Hal, our protagonist, has faced trauma in a past that does not want to leave him alone, and so he spirals into drugs, casual hookups and attempts to redeem himself through his catholic faith. The writing mimics this messiness, this spiralling into madness and chaos, and how someone can try and pull themselves out of it.

The dynamic between Hal and his father, akin to a precarious dance over the chasm of their mutual disdain, forms the heart of the narrative. Their intertwined loathing reflects a broader spectrum of self-deprecation masterfully painted by Allen Bratton. From this central conflict blooms a delicate web of relationships: Hal and Harry, the optimist whose earnestness contrasts starkly with Hal's cynicism; Hal and Jack Falstaff, a faded confidante from Hal's past; Hal's intricate ties with his younger siblings, notably Philippa, as well as the complexities of extended family dynamics and the aristocratic entourage.

However as other critics and readers have found themselves cheering for Hal amidst the bleakness, a testament to Bratton's writing skills, I found myself more frustrated at Hal's self-destructive behaviours than I was understanding.
As said previously, if you're a fan of those authors who like their characters messy and mirror their personalities in the chaotic plot, then this novel is definitely more of your taste.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for providing a copy of the e-ARC. My opinions are honest and my own.

I finished Henry, Henry a week ago, but I needed to sit with the story and the characters before writing my review. Henry, Henry is a modern retelling of Shakespeare's Henry IV, which I haven't read, so I can't speak to the similarities between the two. Hal Lancanster is one of those characters that you just want to grab by the shoulders and shake. He is selfish, incredibly judgemental, and not particularly kind. In the beginning I found him so frustrating that I didn't think I would be able to continue with the book. But with each page, we learn more about Hal and his relationships with his friends, family, and the Catholic Church, and understand a bit more about his actions and reactions throughout the book.

For me, the story dragged on for a bit in the middle, and given the nature of the events in this story, I didn't necessarily want to pick it up and keep reading. I thought the writing was fantastic though, and I will certainly read another book by Allen Bratton.

There are a lot of trigger warnings for this book, so proceed with caution.

As I sat down to write this review, I found myself wrestling with a myriad of emotions—a testament to the complexity of the novel itself. Henry Henry is a difficult novel; the kind of book that will linger with you long after you’ve turned the final page. While my review and my rating may seem overly negative, I want to stress that, despite my criticisms, this is a book that left a profound impact on me. Let’s dive in.

The issue was, for me, that there were things I liked but nothing I absolutely loved. Take, for example, Bratton’s writing style. On the one hand, the prose is undeniably beautiful; this is a novel full of lush, vivid imagery. However, the beautiful prose becomes meandering and convoluted when it has nothing to latch onto. Many chapters end abruptly. While this could’ve been a stylistic choice, I found it frustrating. There are also some strange formatting issues, which are likely due to the uncorrected review copy I received and should be fixed before publication, but I wanted to make a note of them in case this isn’t the case.

Let me get into some plot specifics. Shakespeare retellings are a dime a dozen, but it’s an ambitious choice to parallel The Henriad. As a lover of contemporary literature and Shakespearean classics, I was naturally drawn to the promise of a modern, queer retelling. Yet, as I delved deeper, I felt unsatisfied. The plot often meandered, struggling to maintain a clear direction, leaving me longing for a more focused narrative. Additionally, as one of maybe… I don’t know… ten people who are familiar enough with Henry IV to comment on the parallels… I felt jarred by the choices Bratton makes and how he utilizes Shakespearean allusions. There’s a tantalizing premise here, yet Henry Henry falls short in exploring its Shakespearean roots.

Specifically: this is a book that would really benefit from trigger warnings. I know that trigger warnings are a contentious subject in the publishing industry, but, in my opinion, this is a book where the cover art and summary don’t accurately capture the VERY heavy themes covered within. Incest is present in Shakespeare (cough, Hamlet? Richard III?) but it’s not present in Henry IV — or at least not present enough that a reader with some level of familiarity with the Henriad would assume it’d be present here. Again, I want to emphasize that this is not a light, fluffy rom-com. This is a book that has much more in common with A Little Life than you might assume from reading the blurb. (Or maybe that was just a me problem? Food for thought.)

That’s not to say that these themes are handled poorly; on the contrary, Bratton navigates them with remarkable skill and sensitivity. His exploration of heavy topics such as sexual abuse and emotional trauma is commendable, delving deep into the intricacies and complexities of these experiences. However, amidst the weighty themes lies a significant challenge: the novel's narrative feels bloated and overstretched. In the midst of this, one of the novel’s most powerful assets—Hal Lancaster's raw, unfiltered, self-loathing voice—seems to fade into the background. It's a shame to see such a compelling character overshadowed by the meandering plot. 

Plus, let's talk about Hal's love life—specifically, his romance with Harry Percy. Now, don't get me wrong, there was a lot to love (I love Hotspur, so, admittedly I was predisposed to love Harry Percy), but something about it just didn't quite hit the spot for me. The evolution of their relationship from rivals to casual hookups and eventually to something more serious felt abrupt and disjointed. In a novel so deeply rooted in characters, I was taken aback by the sudden shift in their dynamic. It felt as though crucial moments of connection and growth between Hal and Harry were glossed over, leaving their relationship lacking in depth and authenticity. Maybe if their relationship had been given more time to simmer and develop naturally, it would've felt more believable. But as it stands, it left me feeling a bit underwhelmed and wishing for a bit more depth to their dynamic.

So, to wrap up my thoughts: while there's no denying Bratton's skillful writing and the intriguing premise of the story, I can't ignore the nagging feeling of disappointment. The pacing felt off, the romance lacked that spark, and the plot meandered more than I'd hoped. I wonder how much of my negative feelings about this book are due to misplaced expectations. If I had gone into this book expecting an emotional, character-driven book loosely inspired by Henry IV, I might have been more satisfied.

(Review will go live 04/12)

"i want to get eaten by whatever wants to eat me."

loosely-based on Shakespeare's Henry IV, Henry Henry opens with the promise of beautiful prose, self loathing characters, and a vile admission that lies beneath the surface. while each of those things does occur, the journey to reach each of these aspects is middling at best. this novel has all the ingredients to strike something within me, but other than /that/ reveal, i felt almost nothing while reading this. bratton's prose is undoubtedly beautiful, but it quickly becomes meandering when the writing style has nothing to latch onto.

at times i not only loved henry, but found myself buried within him. however, over the course of over 300 pages, his voice becomes lost within the bloated story he forced to inhabit. at times, it feels like this book is attempting to be something it physically cannot become. whether that's the newest great queer novel or a beautiful character study, it's clear that Henry Henry doesn't have the guts to transform into either.

thank you to netgalley and unnamed press for the arc.

There are so many content warnings for this book, but sexual abuse / incest is central to the plot and explicit on page. So read with caution.

This was not the book for me. It was hard to feel bad for the main character in the beginning because he seemed like a whiny rich kid who partied too hard and didn’t bathe enough. But then we saw, explicitly, that he was being sexually abused by his father, and it made me sick. The whole book I was waiting for some kind of resolution or justice for what was happening, and it felt like it was building up to something at the end, but it never came.

The romance also left something to be desired. It seemed like our main character, Hal, didn't even like his boyfriend, Harry Percy, very much? He seemed to be barely tolerating him (and the sex) for the majority of their relationship, and then all of a sudden was in love with him. We also didn't get any resolution for this piece of the plot either.

Thank you Netgalley for sending me this advance copy in exchange for an honest review!

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.