Question for AJ Hall

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

I recently discovered the Trennels community and through it, the two posts you published in December 2003 following Antonia Forest's death.

Firstly, thank you for the posts. Antonia Forest's books have had, and continue to have, a huge influence on me and your posts captured much of what I feel about her books. She was an amazing writer.

Secondly, I hope you don't mind but I have a question relating to the second post. Reading through the list of "firsts" (and mentally checking them off against my own list) the following caught my eye:

Male homosexuality treated as romance and with authorial approval (see previous entry)

I couldn't remember off the top of my head an AF book which expressly featured male homosexuality, let alone with authorial approval, and on going back to your first post I couldn't find the relevant reference. Would you be so very kind as to put me out of my misery and let me know which relationship you were referring to? Without going back through the books, the only modern day possibility I came up with was the Cricket Term reference to the homosexuality in The Mask of Apollo (though I'm never sure what Nicola thinks about homosexuality, based on the "grotty" thought bubble). The Players books offer Humfrey Danvers' unrequited feelings for Nicholas and Christopher Marlowe's somewhat dubious motives for taking Nicholas to London but these aren't really romances, and I'm not clued up enough on the Essex/Southampton dynamic to know if we were being shown a relationship (all wives aside). Unless perhaps you meant that AF treats Humfrey's feelings as romantic? Goes without saying (I hope) that I have no issues with male romance or that I would even begin to imagine AF disapproving of a male romance.

All offers of enlightenment gratefully received, and not just from AJ Hall, natch...

Comments

[coughingbear]

There was a discussion once on Girlsown about whether 'grotty' referred to homosexuality or the school's attitude. Many of us had always read it like you as the school's attitude, and when it was referred to Forest she agreed this was what she had meant (if I'm remembering correctly. And I know the author's intentions don't matter really but it was nice to hear). I wonder how many of us read Mary Renault in the first place because of Forest.

I'm always fascinated/made to wince by Patrick & Ginty's interactions and the whole Crispin/Rosina/whatshisnameRupert thing. And by the way they never stop doing this - at the end of Attic Term he still wonders if she'd like a letter in those terms.

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

I both did and didn't read Mary Renault because of AF. The King Must Die was the first Mary Renault I read but at the time I had no conscious appreciation of who Mary Renault was and no idea that she was the author of the book Nicola got herself into hot water over. But when I came across Mask years later in a secondhand bookshop I couldn't resist the double Forest allusion and bought it. I subsequently had one of those lovely moments of connection when I realised the same author had written The King Must Die and Mask Of Apollo.

I certainly came to Patrick O'Brian through AF, and promptly lost my heart to him.