The Battle of the Atlantic (World War II Series) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809424681 ISBN 13: 9780809424689

Publisher: Time Life Education, 1977

Synopsis

Four friends in 1990s London:

* Sean is the editor of a radically conservative gay style magazine called 'Somdomite'. He is a closet heterosexual, but for professional reasons he pretends to be gay.

* Ysenda is the outspoken female director of a Catholic research institute.

* Wayne is an actor who has achieved fame in a sizzlingly violent gangland movie based on the life of Cardinal Newman.

* Nick is the owner of a controversial psycho-physiotherapy practice in Highgate.

When Sean meets Ysenda's beautiful sister Catherine, a television producer who adores Sean's public persona, it forces him to confront his true heterosexuality and come out. But sometimes people want you to be the label they have given you...and for Sean, for everyone, time is running out, as a millennial crisis is at hand.

LUCKY BABY JESUS truly is a novel about the love that dare not speak its name!

About this title

Review

Journalist Peter Bradshaw made his name for not being Alan Clark in the Evening Standard's spoof diary column, so perhaps it's not surprising that his first novel stars Sean Cunningham, editor of conservative gay rag Somdomite, who, as it happens, is not actually gay. The cynicism of that twist pervades every smoke-filled corner of the book. All the main characters are screamingly fake, from actor Wayne, who plots his career progress on his own "Beaufort Scale of Fame" and his girlfriend progress on "The Emotional Lido"; Ysenda, who occasionally interrupts her hedonistic nightlife to direct the Sacred Heart Institute; and Nick, who made his mark combining Complete Shiatsu Massage with his own brand of psychotherapy. And they all inhabit a capital city hurtling towards the millennium with all its accompanying weird omens and angsty self-regard-in which it's hard to feel much for poor Sean realising he's in love with Ysenda's sister, which won't do his public image much good. Bradshaw has written a fast, witty, endlessly inventive London book which will strike chords throughout the media hangers-on he portrays so knowingly. Enjoy it this summer while it's still hot-this is an emphatically 90s novel, and there ain't much of the 90s left. But there's enough evidence here to suggest that Peter Bradshaw might still be a force to reckon with when Lucky Baby Jesus has become a period piece. --Alan Stewart

Review

Edgy, fast-paced, brilliant. (NEW WOMAN)

Entertaining. (GLASGOW HERALD)

Unexpectedly moving. (THE TIMES)

You would have to be very po-faced not to find yourself giggling at regular intervals. (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

Edition details

• Publisher: Time Life Education
• Publication date: 1977
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809424681
• ISBN 13: 9780809424689
• Binding: Hardcover