Esteemed author Paul Bailey, who died in October aged 87, was renowned for his humorous talent, deep empathy including for his most flawed characters, and an intelligence that never felt cold. His fiction often explored the influence of recollections on human existence, propelled by sharp, rhythmic dialogue. Apart from fiction, he also excelled as an autobiographer, verse writer, and other capacities—here is a guide to the volumes he authored.
Bailey was a social being, a skilled communicator fond of casual small talk, in the words of a creation. Alongside pal Beryl Bainbridge would watch the TV show Coronation Street and analyze it telephonically. This pleasure in informal dialogues shines through in his fictional works Trespasses (1970) and Peter Smart’s Confessions (1977). The two present a leading man surrounded by comic, maddening, theatrical individuals, frequently family members whose impact cannot be avoided. “Why would anyone desire normality?” asks the mother of Ralph in Trespasses when he reveals he is gay. Like an evening with your wittiest, boldest friend.
Bailey wrote superbly on old age, throughout his literary path. His initial fiction At the Jerusalem (1967) follows Faith Gadny’s experiences while she adapts to a nursing home, in which other inhabitants provide kindness absent in employees, whose concern via queries “Aren’t you watching television?”. In his penultimate novel Chapman’s Odyssey (from 2011), an aged patient moves between clashing with physicians (“I only drink superior wines”, he affirms after reprimands over liver tests) and confronting past remembrances from his parent, romances, fictional icons such as Pip from Dickens or Emma from Austen. The two works contain humorous dialogues however tinged with impending endings. In Bailey’s fiction, laughter is suspect. In that book, “the matron smiled, shut the smile off quickly”; Faith Gadny chuckles anxiously when confronted about her behavior. In that novel, Harry cautions that “my smiles aren’t what they seem”. The audience’s grins, though, are real.
Besides novels, Bailey was a talented life writer, releasing two self-written volumes. An Immaculate Mistake (from 1990) serves as a classic of recollection, the heading taken from his mother’s words that “You were our mistake. You ought not to be here, by rights.”. (“She was old now, and letting go of her secrets,” he comments. “This one, she knew, would be of particular interest to me.”) This book reveals the origins of misguided, loving, frustrating parents throughout his books. It likewise portrays a moving picture of a boy discovering his sexuality in the 1940s–50s, when homosexuality was illegal, and his kin viewed it as suspicious that a son would purchase flowers for his mum; and of a hopeful performer (Paul Bailey performed before writing) who could recite Hamlet as a teen. His subsequent life story A Dog’s Life (published in 2004) centers on life with his mongrel puppy Circe, his former partner David, his fondness for Romania—that influenced later novels like Kitty and Virgil, Uncle Rudolf, as well as The Prince’s Boy—and heaps of rumors, featuring an anecdote regarding Iris Murdoch calling an audience member an “idiot”.
Paul Bailey’s books are mostly concise—the notable Old Soldiers (published in 1980) is barely 100 pages—but for something shorter, sample his verse in his final phase. The pair of volumes Inheritance (2019) and the title Joie de Vivre (2022) display Bailey’s wit, empathy, precision in brief format. These verses are full of death and life. Two love themes recur: for his mother (“I’m closer to you now – / I need to tell you – / than I ever was in life”) and for his civil partner Jeremy Trevathan. In Amazement, he describes the happiness from enjoying “foolish television” side by side, finishing with: “It’s amazing, somehow, to eat cheese and sip wine while the world darkens.”
Most agree that Bailey’s most ambitious novel remains Gabriel’s Lament, a Booker Prize finalist in 1986. (He served as a judge for the award in 1982, a task he hated.) This was the book Paul Bailey valued most, despite the fact “it drained me. It took everything out of me”. It follows the tale of Gabriel Harvey, with a missing mother and a father who becomes an unbearable snob following a financial windfall, with possible connections. It acts as a representation of the city in that era, a tale of emotional unraveling, and both comic and tragic like his other works. To continue, it led to a follow-up, Sugar Cane (from 1993), that he investigated by attending brothels to observe.
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