The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

Huh, I'm not sure what I just read. I liked it! But I can't tell if it's a particularly deep romance novel or a shallow fictional account of a gay life.

I'm new to reading romance novels. I picked this book up thinking it was a basic romance, some distracting and escapist fantasy about an older man finding love late in life. Sounded fun! And that is kind of what the book is.

But then also the book is a lot harder than that. It's crushingly bleak in the first third. And then instead of resolving the trauma with some safe and escapist plot it goes into heavy personal territory of a repressed gay man and his entire life wasted by homophobia. And it dwells on that quite believably and seriously and suddenly it's a much higher stakes novel.

Except.. the writing is really shallow. The protagonist snaps out of a decades-long depression and social isolation over the course of one long weekend, a transformation literally attributed to a hangover. That's not how real depression works. And he throws himself into a new social life and recognizing his gayness with basically no difficulty. Everyone encourages him, and welcomes him, and he's successful at the transformation at basically every turn. In the span of a few weeks. That's not how real life works.

So maybe this book is an escapist fantasy afterall? But it's been grounded in such a serious and tragic real story, one I personally know men who have suffered. So seeing someone escape all that in the twinkle of an eye seems disrespectful.

On the other hand it's also a fun and hopeful book about a man turning his life around in later life and discovering himself. And I really liked the theme of finding community, both in his workplace and as a member of the gay community. What an encouraging thing! Just with the backdrop of the very real feeling trauma he suffered seeing a breezy romance solution to all those problems felt, well, awfully shallow.

I may be taking this book too seriously, maybe it is just a fluffy romance novel and I should enjoy the fantasy of escape. But then the subject is so serious, rooted in real trauma. So then I'm annoyed by the fluff. I'm vexed!

Either way glad I read the book. And devoured it, finished in two days. And I'm compelled to read more about the book or talk about it with people to put what I read in context. I think on the balance this could have been a really good gay fiction novel if the author had tried to write it in a serious literary style. But that's not what this book is and it's successful on its own terms too.