'Mother's Boy' by Patrick Gale

This was chosen by one of the reading groups that i have joined and is a good example of a book I would never have considered reading off my own back. I read another Patrick Gale year or two ago - also for a reading group. It was called 'A Place Called Winter' and I do not recall a lot about it except that it was, like this one, a gay love story set in the past at a time when such liaisons had to be hidden.

This book was interesting for two main reasons. First, much of the early part is set in places very local to me. I live within walking distance of Teignmouth and Shaldon, just along to coast from my village on the south Devon coast. I am also not far from the village of Trusham which also features in this story.

The other reason that the book was interesting was the way that it is based (very loosely I understand) on the early life of the poet Charles Causley (1917-2023) and that of his mother Laura. It takes considerable skill and a lot of research for a novelist to pull this kind of novel off convincingly, and for the most part Patrick Gale managed it I think. In the epilogue he makes it clear that many of the characters and incidents are invented, so a reader has to guard against being seduced by the writing into thinking that it is in any shape or form a biography.

The only aspect that made me uneasy - and some of my fellow reading group members too - is the assumption made that Charles Causley was a sexually active homosexual man throughout his young adulthood, including the period he was in the navy during the Second World War. This may well not have been the case at all, yet rather dominates the story. In truth I would have liked less of this kind of invention, and more of a focus on the known facts about his life, particularly his poetry and professional life as a teacher.

On the positive side, I found the passages set in wartime Gibraltar and Malta to be compelling, well-researched and really very interesting to read.