The Lavender Book Club will be discussing Henry Henry by Allen Bratton on Thursday, April 30, 6:30pm – 8:00pm at the Pittsburgh Equality Center — 5401 Centre Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15222.

N.B. To avoid the NFL Draft traffic and related chaos, we’re meeting a week later than usual!

About the Book

“Bratton’s electric debut novel transforms Shakespeare into a modern, queer drama that’s as bawdy as it’s sharp.” —Hugh Ryan, The New York Times

LAUGH NOW. CRY LATER. 

“Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere…”

It’s London, 2014, and Hal Lancaster, son and heir of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, is in a holding pattern: his mother is dead, his father is dying or remarrying or both, his siblings are fighting, his internship is pointless, and nobody will leave him alone.

Everything is as it should be and yet nothing is right. Over the course of a year of partying, drinking, and flirting to dubious consequence, Hal is tested by brutal family legacies, Catholic guilt, and the terrifying possibility of being loved. All of which is complicated by a pattern of abuse that threatens to chase Hal into adulthood. The House of Lancaster will never be the same.

Crackling with intelligence and wit, Henry Henry is a brilliant recasting of the Henriad in which Hal Lancaster is a queer protagonist for a new era. Allen Bratton arrives as a successor to Waugh and St. Aubyn with this lush, stylish novel of family, legacy, and what it means to be alive today.

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About the Author

Allen Bratton was born in the United States. He holds an MA in English Language and Literatures, having written a thesis on medieval English kingship. He is the winner of the 2021 Sewanee Review Fiction Contest and was longlisted for the 2021 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. Henry Henry is his debut novel.