Author Alec Scott’s 1980s-set debut is drenched in the longing and the yearning that is inside every romantic, lonesome gay young man.Katherine Emery/Supplied
- Title: Until It Shimmers
- Author: Alec Scott
- Genre: Fiction
- Publisher: AOS Publishing
- Pages: 261
A voyage home after a battle is sometimes crammed with misadventure – just ask Odysseus. Following a victory, that treacherous return to where one belonged is within the heart of the novel Until It Shimmers, a coming of age, coming out tale. Ned Baldwin, our hero, zips from Trinity College, in Toronto, to London, England – and, eventually, around again. “And so go away, do what you need to do, want to do. But come back,” Oliver, Ned’s father, says, before his son’s departure.
Author Alec Scott’s 1980s-set debut is drenched in the longing and the yearning that is inside every romantic, lonesome gay young man. Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want by The Smiths spins through Ned’s head the first time he enters a gay bar.
Yet everything isn’t all maudlin, in Until It Shimmers – as onyx-dark as one occasion in particular, dubbed “the slash,” dips. Scott infuses a certain macabre humour in spots. Ned’s crashing out of the closet to his mother and father, just as they slam into another car on Oxford Street while driving Ned back to his flat is amusing, in retrospect. “The collision had jarred his confession loose. He couldn’t believe he just blurted it out.” “Are you sure?” Helena, his mother, questions. And so starts Ned’s sailing across the sea, having conquered the battle.
A homosexual in the mix is nothing new, there are a few in family lore: Robbie Baldwin Ross, a great friend and one-time lover of Oscar Wilde, on father’s side; a once-closeted, married uncle on mother’s. But secreting-away ancestry is the name of the game with Helena, Ned’s mother.
More trials and traps strike Ned, as he continues along: punishing self-hatred, hopelessness, a bad first encounter with a man, a good first boyfriend, first intimacy. Luca, an enchanting and entrancing Italian man sweeps Ned into a pleasant existence, giving him a great bite of life as Ned discovers an un-closeted life. It doesn’t hurt that Luca is a fantastic cook, in one instance whipping together a five-course meal precluding the two consummating their relationship.
Scott has a taste for food, and gatherings involving food, all which have an alluring role in Until It Shimmers. Each meal and dinner party more tantalizing than the last, save for a disastrous reconstruction of authentic Roman dishes from classical texts (“Luca was trying quails stuffed with rotted-fish compote and gooseberries”), and a harsh experience with Luca’s flatmate, a jealous long-term companion who’s dying from AIDS. “I thought you might be temporary, like the others.”
A long-time journalist – as well as former barrister – Scott is an expert with composing lively, sparkling, meticulous scenes, featuring precise staging of characters and pitch-perfect dialogue. There is neither a word wasted, nor out of place. The Baldwin’s annual Christmastime cocktail is a crisp, one-act centrepiece in itself. Drifting through the frost that sits between Ned and Helena – acceptance doesn’t come easy – the scene swirls across carols, idle chatter, heated conversation and trays of angels and devils on horseback. Tension grows over every canapé consumed. Still, one wishes, as happens at any charming get-together, that the night will go on forever.
Supplied
Visiting her distant, dastardly and bastardly father in the English countryside in a brusque scene shakes something loose in Helena. Reminiscing that her father did mistreat her – intentionally spooking her horse on a ride so as to not be brought up “wet,” deriding her for becoming a teacher rather than a barrister – Helena realizes she must accept her son for who he is. That, or lose her connection with him.
All that shimmers isn’t gold, at least in Ned’s mind. “But apart from the cat, three good suits and a few good editions of his favourite books, Ned had taken, it seemed, little from his year in London.” Hindsight in youth never is 20/20. But that time away and the journey home did indeed bring about big changes in our hero. Years on, defending his PhD in literature – while a residence don, at Trinity College – Ned turns to Brideshead Revisited, ever a lodestar in gay fiction. “It was a book about integrity. There was dignity in living according to your lights, even if you got lost doing so.”
It is easy to become disoriented, but there is always a possibility to find the way back.
Expand your mind and build your reading list with the Books newsletter. Sign up today.