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"Not many books by anyone so young are worth publishing, but this one was." - John Betjeman "A very good first novel written with fine economy, intelligent and extremely moving." - Angus Wilson "Resolves the mixed and complex emotions of adolescence into the timeless purity of art. Most books about such years come from the pressure of emotional maturity: Kenneth Martin writes from the very heart of them." - Elizabeth Bowen Paul Anderson has just finished school and is spending his last summer at home before he starts university in the autumn. He can hardly wait to escape his ineffectual father and domineering mother, and a long summer spent with nothing to do but work in old Mr. Swallow's store, which never seems to have any customers, is beginning to look dull and interminable. But one day Gary, a young medical student, enters the store, and Paul's life changes forever. He has been brought up to believe that it's wrong, but he can't help it: he's falling in love with Gary. And all of a sudden, the summer becomes a time Paul will never forget. . . . Written when Kenneth Martin was only sixteen, Aubade (1957) remains a moving and honest portrayal of a young man's first love. Long recognized as a classic of gay fiction, Aubade returns to print in this new edition, which includes an introduction by the author discussing the experience of writing and publishing Aubade as a teenager and the reactions to its initial publication. Martin's second novel, Waiting for the Sky to Fall (1959), is also available from Valancourt Books.… (more)
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From a strictly literary point of view it would be very easy to pick Aubade to pieces but that, I think, would be to miss the point in a big way. For all its stylistic naivety and stilted dialogue it possesses a sometimes uncomfortable emotional honesty that could only have come from a young author writing truthfully about his own experience. Had Martin waited to recollect his youthful experience in tranquility the result might have been more polished but, I expect, would have lacked the raw edge which is such a vital part of this book.
I was genuinely moved, not so much perhaps by the writing itself, as the fact that a working-class gay teenager in the viciously homophobic Britain of the 1950s had the courage and self-belief to write it at all. This might not be a literary response but it is a real one and, whatever its shortcomings as fiction or literature, I expect this novel will stay with me long after I have forgotten many much more formally skilled ones. Sometimes what touches the heart has less to do with how ‘well written’ something is (always a value judgement, of course, and by no means necessarily a permanently enduring one) as what the writer is saying and when s/he wrote the book and why. These things are not irrelevant and can actually deepen our understanding and appreciation of a piece of writing. This is certainly the case here and I recommend the 1989 GMP edition as it contains a long and fascinating autobiographical introduction by the author.
I’m grateful to a fellow Goodreads contributor for making me aware of this novel and very glad to have read it. It’s no masterpiece but deserves to be known by anyone interested in the history of gay literature.