by Curtis Garner
Paperback, £10.99
This is a beautiful book. It’s Garner’s second novel, and it follows Daniel, who has moved to London from Cornwall and is figuring out how to mesh his identity together. The chapters alternate between Daniel’s somewhat pained life as a lonely teenager in Cornwall and his much livelier one as a twenty-something in London.
Much of the story is focused on Daniel’s relationship with Jago, a popular boy who he meets in Cornwall as a teenager when he is lonely and seeking connection. The two develop a bond and Garner intricately lays out how their relationship develops over the years: through Daniel moving away, Jago studying and getting a well-paid job, and Daniel ending up at a job in a café after struggling to find an architecture work placement. Their paths diverge quite significantly – Daniel leans into his hedonistic London life, while Jago stays put in Cornwall in his calm and measured way.
There were many things I loved about this book: I felt a bit like my heart was being wrung out to dry, but in a cathartic and enjoyable way. Although Daniel is at times a very repressed character, this book is full of raw vulnerability. He is figuring out how to manage his life and relationships, and there are some richly introspective passages that lay bare the contradictions and nuance of his character. His romantic and sexual relationships are somewhat chaotic, but he has a wonderful best friend and housemate, Raph. Like Daniel, I have often felt that my rural upbringing and city-dwelling adult life have to remain two very separate parts of my life, and I was intrigued to see how Daniel deals with this division of past and present. Garner gets to the heart of the complex feelings familiar to many queer people who find it hard to decide where they belong. The way he writes about both Cornwall and London reflects the nuances of both settings, and he clearly understands the tug of war between childhood and adulthood homes very well.
Orange is most certainly worth a read; Garner’s writing is beautiful and I was gripped by his storytelling right until the end.
Review by Jamie