Feeling out of sight
Cressida Connolly
LET ME COUNT THE WAYS by Deborah Bosley Century, £9.99, pp. 122 If bookshops and libraries arranged their novels in alphabetical order according to subject instead of author, the `A' section would need several shelves for fiction about Aids. Not only fiction: the illness has developed its own literature, including essays, plays and biography — from Larry Kramer's furious polemic to Harold Brod- key's remarkable forthcoming account of his own death, from award-winning poetry by Mark Doty and Thom Gunn to the mawkish fiction of Andrew Holleran, to name a handful. What all these accounts share is a profound sympathy with the suf- ferer: anger is directed at the virus itself, never at its hapless victims. Deborah Bosley's novel is different.
Let Me Count the Ways tells the story of dying from Aids from a new persepctive, that of a hoodwinked, bitterly rejected wife. Long-suffering sweetness is not for her: she is furious with her husband and grudging in her care of him. Frances is an outspoken but unambitious girl who works in a bookshop in London and hopes one day to meet Mr Right. When she encoun- ters a dark-haired, green-eyed (always a winning combination, that) American architect at a drinks party, she falls for him hook, line and sinker. Despite the fact that he is unmarried and in no hurry to make a pass at her, she has no inkling that he might be gay. Nor does he tell her so.
They go to live in San Francisco, where they many. Separate bedrooms soon ensue. Finn still tells Frances nothing about his real inclinations, leaving her to alter- nate between rage and tears at the humilia- tion of his rebuff. After two years — during which time they make love only ten times — he leaves her, advising her to go back to England and get on with her own life. All of which would provide enough material for a perfectly satisfactory novel, but it is only half of the story: the rest describes what happens when Frances returns to America to nurse him through his final ill- ness. It is here that Bosley shows her true mettle, in a completely unsentimental account of the couple's attempts to become reconciled before Finn dies.
Prose style is like men's clothing: the better it is, the less you should notice it. Deborah Bosley's writing is completely nat- ural, unadorned with the contrived literary curlicues which dog so much new fiction. This book is beautifully executed. There is only one thing which gives it away as a first novel, and that is the constant references to smoking. Frances is forever lighting up; every time she has a cigarette we are informed of it, in detail. The bliss of the first few puffs, the way that smoke hangs on warm air, the particular taste tobacco has with a hangover: reading all this is vir- tually passive smoking in itself. Anyone try- ing to quit the habit should steer clear of this book.
The rest will find much to enjoy. She is particularly good on what she calls the `supermarket philosophy' of small-town America and, despite the grimness of its central subject, there is much to laugh at here. The description of an evangelical ser- vice of born-again Christians is brilliantly funny, and it is very much to Bosley's credit that she can draw the comedy from a situa- tion without cruelty. Her blunt, obstinate heroine is funny and touching — almost despite herself — and she manages to con- vey the attraction of Finn, despite his shifti- ness. The gruff tenderness of their final accommodation is moving and true. Hats off to Deborah Bosley for this unaffected and original debut.
Darren's at a difficult age: he doesn't know whether to wear his shirt in or out.'
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