Love, Leda

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Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). As a person of many guilts, I feel that the whole value of my body and my mind is built on instincts.

Of course those brackets were quite narrow in the time the novel is set in, but the male gaze of the time is very palpable. It might well have been explosive and remembered as one of the great works of working-class literature of the time alongside works by authors and playwrights such as Alan Sillitoe, Shelagh Delaney or Bill Naughton. For a few moments we gaze at the world in silent peace, then begin to kiss as he starts to lubricate himself.

Sir William Boggs of Scotland Yard, investigating, finds nothing to suspect murder and believes that Peter Wood committed suicide of his own free will. Along the way, he spends some comfortable nights at the home of his friend, Thomas, whose flat he enters through an open window and whose clothes he shares liberally, who gives him money and remonstrates with him on his lifestyle choices, effectively acting as the moral conscience of the times. If you loved Catcher in the Rye, The Bell Jar or Everything I Know About Love, you’ll love this book too.

The antidote to Leda’s dreary, sometimes chilling travels, which all seem to be directed at running into his unrequited love, is Hyatt’s sobering sense of reality: while it is not a feel-good story, it is a frank, if somewhat stark, exploration of the prejudices and challenges faced by gay men in the 60s and how, even in the midst of that, there are covert delights as Leda moves through London with the deft movements of a secret agent, undercover but in plain sight.It does beautiful justice to the bewilderment you feel trying to find direction in life while making so many mistakes while you’re young. For much of the novel consists of rather mundane accounts of the protagonist's daily life, spent crashing with various acquaintances and scrounging out a living doing casual jobs; having meaningless sex with a plethora of both male and female hookups in sometimes graphic detail. As a window into the life of a gay man in 1960s London it was vaguely interesting, but the monotony started to wear on me towards the end. By turns, audacious and affecting, Hyatt’s semi-autobiographical novel gives us a handful of days in the company of Leda, depressed narcissist and self-proclaimed ‘social bum’.

Love, Leda also contains a fair amount of violence and reference to suicide so readers should be aware of this. In his pursuit of the bohemian, Leda leads a nocturnal life of smoky bars, jazz clubs, and the odd dalliance with a woman.He began writing poetry in the 60s, but only published a handful in obscure magazines, despite being deeply involved with the literary scene and even dating the publisher, Antony Blond.