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Henry Henry

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Henry Henry

By: Allen Bratton
Narrated by: Sebastian Humphreys
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

London, 2014. Hal Lancaster – twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card – is the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster. Henry is half tyrant, half martyr, with an investment in his eldest son that has grown into an obsession. While Hal floats between internships and drinking sessions, Henry keeps him in check with passive-aggression, religious guilt, and a cruelty that Hal sometimes confuses for tenderness.

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, a life of his own. 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.

*2025 Lammy Award Finalist*

'One of the most exciting new novels' FINANCIAL TIMES

'Very funny... Its deeply felt pages flew by' GUARDIAN

'Sexy, compassionate, uncommonly imaginative: I've never read anything quite like it' Oisín McKenna, author of Evenings and Weekends

'Deeply enjoyable' Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea

'Thrillingly imaginative' Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time

©2024 Allen Bratton (P)2024 Penguin Audio

 Coming of Age Genre Fiction Humorous Literature & Fiction Romance Funny

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Critic reviews

One of the most exciting new novels I’ve read in the past couple of months
Darkly humorous
Dark and gripping… I couldn’t put it down
With this reimagining, Bratton has created a marvelously detailed world of supernumerary aristocrats, as rich, toxic and wild as the best entries in the the Real Housewives franchise
Fun... Bratton has a sharp eye for the absurdities of the white-saviour ex-public-schoolboy. And there’s a keen sense of the aching fugue of one’s early twenties
Wonderful... This book needs to be read right now by as many people as possible (Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans)
Carnal and precise, a challenging taxonomy of familial and personal failure that Bratton renders without tidiness or judgment (Raven Leilani, author of Luster)
I tore through Henry Henry in two days. A thrillingly imaginative new vision for Shakespeare’s Henriad – witty in its narrative parallels and deliciously realist in its resetting. You will come away from this book changed (Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time)
Bratton executes the project sharply, with humour and poignancy… He can really write
Irreverent, immersive, scathingly funny, with a deep emotional undercurrent that pulls you out unexpectedly into heart-wrenching territory. Henry Henry is a brilliantly glinting and twisted debut (Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide)
All stars
Most relevant
I am not a person of colour. This is a fascinating story - horrible - at the same time. I wonder if the author is/was the best person to have been chosen to read the work? For me the reading was too much on one note so I found it difficult to hear/listen to what was being read. It is a story well worth telling and hearing. I have given it repeat hearings - had to because I found it too easy to glide over - I am pleased to have given the story repeat hearings nonetheless - well worth the time. I'm not sure if the obvious references to Henry IV parts 1 and 2 were a hindrance or a help to my understanding what was going on.

A Fascinating Story

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The writing is excellent. Having just finished the audio I don’t know what to think. I wanted it to be longer. Perhaps some resolution? I can’t fault the writing. The plot was fine. Certain elements made for uncomfortable reading.

Unsure

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Very impressively written book. It reminded me a lot of A Little Life, in style, tone, and themes. It's very well-written. I was surprised to find out that the author is American as the authenticity of British life and aristocracy was very real.

I didn't know much about this book going in. The book is called "enjoyable" and "funny" by other authors on its cover which gives completely the wrong impression. It's actually a harrowing and deeply sad novel. I wasn't prepared for the themes of incest and child abuse going in but they were handled in a raw, visceral and deeply tragic way. Henry is such a despicable and evil man and you really feel for Hal: broken, ashamed, unable to speak up. The depiction of such abuse and its affects was authentic and heart-wrenching.

The only thing I didn't love about the book was the ending, in which Richard suddenly became paramount and lots of family history was relayed. I found this a bit dull and I thought the ending could have been better if it focused more on Hal and Percy, but the author seemed to want more realism over a neat or dramatic ending, which I respect.

The discomfort and the toxicity lasted right until the end, with neither Philipa or Hal quite granted relief.

A poignant novel that deserves to be far more popular.

Like A Little Life meets Saltburn

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