Alexis Hall's Reviews > My Policeman

Review contains spoilers. Because I am the worst type of person.

Omg, why I did read this? No, seriously why? I guess I wanted to read something queer that wasn’t explicitly m/m ... except I forgot a certain tendency (and this is an issue I have that is detached from the identity of the writer) in litfic about teh gays (see also A Little Life) around that there's a massive (I would argue, mostly straight) market for stories WHERE THEY MAKE US AS MISERABLE AS POSSIBLE. And while I have some patience for marginalised people writing tragedy for themselves for the sake of having a voice and finding catharsis, I have exactly none for non-marginalised people (or people marginalised along different axes) diddling themselves gleefully over the fact that marginalised people have shitty lives.



Anyway, what’s especially annoying about this book is that, in many ways, it is quite good. Except for the fact it’s awful. It’s set in 1950s Brighton, and evokes the period and the place really well. The writing is engaging and, at times, deeply compassionate, especially some of the sequences from Patrick’s diary. The story is, as I have indicated, queer-tragedy-by-numbers. The ‘my policeman’ of the title is Tom ... a policeman, who falls in love with a gay museum curator, but still marries a womanz (who is also in love with him).

There’s this slightly awkward framing device in which part of the book is written from the perspective of Marion, late in their lives, scribbling a confession to her husband about the events that took place earlier in their marriage. And the gaps are filled in by Patrick’s diary, written at the time, and later used as evidence in his trial for acts of gross indecency. Tom has no voice of his own at all, existing only in the eyes of his two lovers, which is both fitting and annoying. Fitting because his silence is kind of A THEME and annoying because it means, as a reader, there’s no way to access what these two people find so worth ruining their lives over in him.

I mean, probably that’s point. You can’t precisely point at what in a person creates love and maintains it—love is always alien from the outside (oh, y’see, ANOTHER THEME). But, hey, I’m a romance reader. At least have a go. And, more defensibly, I’m not a big fan of devices-for-the-sake-of-devices. Thematic/appropriate is not enough if it’s also emotionally disengaging. So say I, anyway.

There’s also this epic gap between the events and the frame. The frame being the future where Tom and Marion have been married for forty years, and presumably miserable, and Patrick has apparently had some kind of stroke, and Marion has insisted that she and Tom become his carer (for he has NOBODY because the gays, oh the gays, the lonely lives we lead) even though Tom won’t speak to him because of TEH TRAGEDEE and Marion was the woman who literally brought about said tragedy. The events being the time the past where Marion got Patrick sent to prison for indecency on account of his banging (being in love with) her husband. Which is sort of a difficult situation all round. And obviously we’re meant to blame SOCIETY, MAN, SOCIETY because if not for SOCIETY, MAN, SOCIETY than Tom would have been able to be with Patrick openly so he wouldn’t have married a woman he didn’t love and nobody would have been sent to prison for gross indecency.

On principle I didn’t want to condemn Marion even though she does a terrible, terrible thing (and knows she did) because Evil Woman Destroys Beautiful Gays is a cliché I despise almost as intensely as Gays Are For Tragedy.

Anyway, what’s really jarring is that Tragedy Happens and we last leave Patrick being horribly beaten up in prison for, yep, you guessed it being a gay. And then we’re blah years in the future and Patrick has had a terrible stroke and Marion is consumed by guilt for what she did to him. But ... what the fuck happened in between? I mean, I realise it’s a book about an incident – the events leading directly up to it and the far-reaching emotional consequences. And it couldn’t exactly detail The Fully Well Rounded And Satisfying Life Patrick Lived After Being Released From Prison Before Incidentally Having A Stroke because that would a) be very long b) outside the scope of the book and c) destroy the deep terrible tragedy of the gays.

But it does sort of feel like one the tragedy has happened, the author couldn’t be arsed any more. Except to swoop in and beat on a gay a bit more. I mean, yes, the man lost everything. Let’s give him a stroke too! Why not!



Anyway, here is a bit of Patrick thinking about his relationship with his ex-lover, Michael. And nicely indicates why this book infuriated me to the degree it did, because it’s quietly beautiful and very sad and sort of indicates that you can discuss this stuff without a drama klaxon.

We used to dance, Michael and I. Every Wednesday night. I’d make everything right. Fire laid. Dinner made (he loved anything with cream and butter. All those French sauces – sole au vin blanc, poulet au gratin à la crème landaise – and, to finish, if I’d had time, Saint Émilion au chocolat). A bottle of claret. The sheets fresh and clean, a towel laid out. A newly pressed suit. And music. All the sentimental magic that he loved. Caruso to start (I’ve always hated him, but for Michael I endured it). Then Sarah Vaughan singing ‘The Nearness of You’. We’d cling to each other for hours, shuffle round on the rug like a couple of marrieds, his cheek burning against mine. Wednesdays were an indulgence, I know that. For him and for me. I made him his favourite butter-rich foods (which played havoc with my stomach), hummed along to ‘Danny Boy’, and, in return, he danced in my arms. Only when the records were all played, the candles burned down to pools of wax, would I slowly undress him, here in my sitting room, and we’d dance again, naked, in absolute silence, save for our quickening breaths.

PS – Michael is blackmailed for his gayness and kills himself.

[This review brought to you by GR's insistence that I read 12 books this year in a public way]

Edit: from the semi-regular comments I STILL get on this review (despite the fact I wrote it in 2016) this is one of my most contentious GR reviews. Listen, if you liked this book, that’s cool. You can even tell me why it worked for you, when it didn’t work for me, if you want.

What is a completely pointless waste of your time, however, is swinging by to tell me what I felt about the book is wrong. Looking back, was I bit uncharitable? Y’know, probably. Have I taken the time to try to understand where the book was coming from and acknowledge its strengths: yes. Does the book for me: still no.

And that is okay. This is a critically acclaimed book published by a high profile author, who has recently secured a film deal on it. Believe me, she is fine. She does not need to be defended from a non-glowing GR review by someone utterly irrelevant to her.

And, yes, yes, you can still come to complain at me because you liked the book and I didn’t. Just don’t expect me to care?