Henry Henry

Allen Bratton

“Bratton has created a marvelously detailed world of supernumerary aristocrats, as rich, toxic and wild as the best entries in the 'Real Housewives' franchise." —The New York Times Book Review

LAUGH NOW. CRY LATER.

It’s London, 2014, and Hal Lancaster, son and heir of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, is in a holding pattern: his mother is dead, his father is dying or remarrying or both, his siblings are fighting, his internship is pointless, and nobody will leave him alone. Everything is as it should be, in other words, and yet nothing is right.

Over the course of a year of partying, drinking, and flirting to dubious consequence, Hal is tested by brutal family legacies, Catholic guilt, and the terrifying possibility of being loved. All of which is complicated by a pattern of abuse that threatens to chase Hal into adulthood. The House of Lancaster will never be the same.

Crackling with intelligence and wit, Allen Bratton arrives as a successor to Waugh and St. Aubyn with this lush, stylish novel of family, legacy, and what it means to be alive today.

Praise for Henry Henry

"At times witty and at others harrowing, Bratton’s book memorably explores the unexpected depths of its protagonist. This novel revisits classic literature but never feels beholden to it." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“A compelling debut [that] digs into the conflicting emotions at the heart of an aristocratic family in 2010s England…Bratton writes about this rarefied milieu with fascination and dismay—the satire here is both subtle and very funny.” —The Guardian

"Bratton’s electric debut novel transforms Shakespeare into a modern, queer drama that’s as bawdy as it’s sharp." —Hugh Ryan, The New York Times

"Allen Bratton's Henry Henry brilliantly highlights the tension between history and modernity, power and freedom, and fathers and sons. A darkly humorous examination of the weight of privilege packed with drugs, dicks, Catholicism, cigarettes, and, yes, love—Henry Henry is a sharply-written party you don't want to miss." —Isaac Fitzgerald, author of Dirtbag Massachusetts

"Darkly witty... a chronicle of survival and healing from generational trauma." —Publishers Weekly

"Henry Henry is carnal and precise, a challenging taxonomy of familial and personal failure that Bratton renders without tidiness or judgment." —Raven Leilani, author of Luster

"Not only is Henry Henry one of the first books of the year that has inspired an audible gasp, it’s also the year's finest debut. It has the power to reinvigorate literature with the type of daring prose that is becoming much too rare." —Jeremy O. Harris, Playwright of Slave Play

"Allen Bratton observes social and emotional detail with a shocking, thrilling level of precision and wisdom. This book bounds between the surreal and the heartrending, telling a story which is beautiful and desolate and wildly funny all at once. It's sexy, compassionate, uncommonly imaginative: I've never read anything quite like it." —Oisín McKenna, author of Evenings and Weekends

"To say that Henry Henry offers a vision of queer healing as well as queer suffering is not to say that Hal heals, but that he begins to see that disinheriting the past may be possible. It’s a fragile possibility, but one that offers a kind of hope—not only to Hal, but also to the worst of us sinners." —Cleveland Review of Books