Love, Leda

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Apesar de estar disponível ainda só em inglês, sem traduções, a obra de Mark Hyatt (1940-1972) está revisitada hodiernamente graças às informações contidas internet, em parte, mas principalmente pelos esforços de muitos historiadores da literatura britânicos e americanos. His tale of unrequited love, loneliness of the flesh, and life on the margins owes something to the curdled realism of mid-century England, and something to the existential riffing of the Nouveau Roman. And then there is the incessant pining for Daniel, the heterosexual priest with whom he is in love, which is less a plot device than it is a symbolic marker for the social conditions of pre-1967 homosexuals in Britain. That's not to say the book isn't sophisticated because it contains some absolutely beautiful lines, vivid descriptions and thoughtful commentary.

On the surface, Love, Leda is a straightforward narrative stroll around 1960s Soho, taking in the sights and the characters of the age in variously humorous, awkward and sinister encounters.The miserable, stuffy greyness of Britain, the twitching curtains and tutting old ladies on damp double deckers, the bigoted policemen and the weak, milky cups of tea – these are the things that define the world Leda inhabits, one that seemed like it could go on for ever. He is often caught up in feeling which he cannot control and sex is viewed often as a way to inflict pain on himself as much as it is a release or a way of sharing intimacy. I think I’ll make my way back to town and spend the night in a coffee bar listening to the juke-box.

Hyatt is an important literary parent to everyone writing queer London, dreaming of lives free of drudgery and asking what the point of living is. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. At times, love Leda is not an easy read, with no chapter structure and long paragraphs which blur into an unevenly paced timeline. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. The book's eponymous hero Leda has no fixed abode and bounces between male and female lovers while earning a bit of cash from low paid jobs in metal work and kitchens.

The man in question is married with a child, the very model of conformity that Leda professes to disdain. We read literary fiction, non-fiction, classics and children’s books, all genres and styles embraced in our aim to share the love.

In one such episode, he picks up a guy on the Bayswater Road who takes him to an alleyway and roughs him up a bit, but it is unclear whether the violence is part of the sexual act, and indeed whether it is wanted by Leda, who walks away wounded but not entirely dissatisfied. An unearthed treasure of its time, Mark Hyatt’s compelling and emotive novel Love, Leda recounts a whirlwind of intimacies and embodiment, philosophy and humour, in a daring depiction of queer desire, impulse and need, laced through a context of disconnection. Leda is unattached to a home, job or partner but finds moments of comfort and intimacy among a community of gay men and divorced women. His childhood was unhappy and in adulthood he attempted suicide more than once, and was very likely was subjected to ECT.It does beautiful justice to the bewilderment you feel trying to find direction in life while making so many mistakes while you’re young.

As I sink into his body I watch myself, stay there, then become mobilised, my movements making an animal sucking noise. I, the brave one, god of any telephone kiosk, walk down Dean Street, see the man of the day; raincoat, shoulders round, hair black, falling out; heavenly blue eyes cast down into his own. They’ve worked out that it was probably written in the mid 1960s, and that the novel is set over a fortnight in the early 1960s.After reading the forward I said aloud, “Wow that’s the best forward I’ve ever read, this has got a lot to live up to! Leda keeps up a façade of bouncing energy and devil-take-the-hindmost but there are very few moments when that seems much more than an act from someone with a fairly thick skin.