Evenings and Weekends: A brilliant debut novel about queer life from Oisín McKenna

London; 2019. As a beached whale lies beside the Thames, a sweltering summer is leaving the city’s residents with a sense that something – whatever that is – is going to happen, and when it does, it will be as explosive as a thunderstorm.

For Maggie, it’s about being pregnant and broke, and facing the prospect of returning to the hometown just beyond the city that she had fought so hard to escape; this time, with her partner Ed, who has his own demons.

Then there’s Phil, Maggie’s best friend, who is struggling to make sense of his own life as a gay man. His brother Callum is about to be married, but there are problems on that front too.

Oisín McKenna’s debut novel, Evenings and Weekends, begins on a Friday afternoon as the weekend approaches. Apart from a short coda, it essentially concludes at the end of that weekend. But don’t let that give you the impression that the 352 pages are in any way slow.

It’s a beautifully paced exploration of characters who are by no means unflawed, but feel completely authentic, as they try to work their way through particularly intense periods of their lives.

The central characters are all from working-class backgrounds and McKenna is excellent at weaving this into other aspects of their experiences – particularly in terms of sexuality and gender, but with ethnicity featuring too, via a strong backstory.

McKenna is a spoken-word artist, and this comes through in the musicality and rhythm of the language in the book, which is not only very effective, but joyful.

A gritty work, it’s sexually explicit in places, but always empathic, while never pretending that every relationship doesn’t have its difficult elements.

It’s also a love letter to London – particularly the east of the city – almost a walking tour of the Hackney I live in, really capturing, in detail, many places I know, together with introducing me to ones I will now check out!

The book came out early this month, but it’s taken me a while to feel that I’ve processed my thoughts together coherently enough to review it. It made me think of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway – particularly in terms of the timeframe of the story.

The book was recommended to me just before publication, by a friend who’s a friend of the author. I’ve been struggling with reading in recent months but am glad that I didn’t put off getting a copy. Indeed, I read it over three days – which in present circumstances, is a minor miracle.

Ultimately, I think that Oisín McKenna has given us a queer novel that it is not only brilliant, but links back to that iconic work by Woolf. The key difference here being its exploration of working as opposed to upper class, plus sexuality and gender, yet all within a similarly limited timeframe. And of course, the Bloomsbury Set, of which Woolf was a central figure, was sexually and gender diverse.

I cannot recommend this enough.

Beryl Cook/Tom of Finland: a stimulating exhibition

It might seem a strange idea to stage an exhibition of works by both Beryl Cook (1926-2008) and Touko Laaksonen, who was better known as Tom of Finland (1920-1991), but that’s what Studio Voltaire in Clapham has done. And it works a treat.

It’s a concise selection, but carefully chosen and with curator’s notes that avoid the pretentious and actually provide good context.

Cook is famous for her paintings of voluptuous women, predominantly working class. They’re often skimpily attired and seen with very high heels, drinks and/or fags in hand. Importantly, there is no sign of them being ashamed of their bodies – and they have the temerity to be having fun.

Victoria Wood described Cook’s paintings as being “like Rubens with jokes”.

She was self-taught and, entirely predictably, like LS Lowry, the British art establishment was sniffy. Even when she died, obituaries referred to her saucy seaside postcard as ‘naïve’. But she was – and continues to be – incredibly popular, while some major galleries now display paintings by her.

Tom’s works are more overtly and explicitly sexual. He took his name for the sake of anonymity, when by the late 1950s, he was an illustrator for US magazine Physique Pictorial, which portrayed muscled men in homoerotic activities that would just scrape past the censor.

Looking at his works of extremely muscled and well-hung hunks now, it’s easy to think of them as reflecting tropes of gay culture: the cowboy, the sailor, the leather man. All very Village People. But then that’s because Tom helped create such an incredibly influential aesthetic.

Like Cook, his figures are predominantly working class. The hyper-masculine nature of them was a direct challenge to the idea that gay men were effeminate. They are also clearly happy in their own bodies – and they’re having fun.

The styles of both artists are very different. But they’re instantly recognisable, beautifully executed and absolutely suit their subjects.

Of the works on display, there are several standouts. Cook’s 1976 painting The Lockyer Tavern (pictured at the top of this review), shows women drinking in a Plymouth gay pub – the artist was very much an ally – is iconic.

Personal Services

There’s also Personal Services from 1987, inspired by the life of famous madame and dominatrix, Cynthia Payne. It was used as a poster for the Terry Jones film about Payne, of the same title.

Ladies Night (Ivor Dickie) from 1981 portrays women surrounding a male pole dancer/stripper and laughing and straining to see as he pulls down his thong.

There’s also a display of some of the photos she took to help her work, which is illuminating.

Much of Tom’s work was graphite on paper – and untitled. I have selected three to include here, all of which showcase his skill and the points I’ve made above, but all of which are (just about!) ‘safe’ to see.

Studio Voltaire is a small exhibition space and this is a small exhibition. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t offer an experience that breaks away from mainstream exhibitions to represent and celebrate communities and groups in a way that is really welcome and thoroughly life-affirming.

Ladies Night (Ivor Dickie)

Beryl Cook/Tom of Finland is at Studio Voltaire until 25 August.

It includes explicit artistic representations of gay sex.

 

Love Lies Bleeding: A taut, sexy thriller

It’s 1989 in a small town in America: Louise ‘Lou’ Langston is the manager of a gym, where she spends an inordinate amount of time unblocking toilets and has a sideline in dealing steroids. But change is in the air when Jackie Cleaver hitches into town on her way to a bodybuilding contest in Las Vegas, and walks into the gym to keep up her training regime.

Lou is instantly smitten. After she rescues Jackie from a homophobic incident outside the gym, she takes her back to her own home. Since Jackie plans on staying until it’s almost time for the competition, she takes a job at a local gun range, not knowing that it’s owned by Lou’s father, Lou Langston Snr, who also runs a violent criminal enterprise.

Also employed at the range is JJ, the husband of Lou’s sister, Beth, who is violently abusive to his wife. After another violent episode, things get out of hand, with huge ramifications for Lou and Jackie.

Directed by Rose Glass from a screenplay that she co-wrote with Weronika Tofilska, Love Lies Bleeding taut, sexy thriller, with themes of domestic abuse, homophobia, misogyny and revenge.

It also riffs brilliantly on tropes of lesbian lives. Here, it’s Lou – while physically much smaller than the big and muscled Jackie – that’s the butch and Jackie the femme.

If all that were not enough to recommend it, Kristen Stewart turns in a superb performance of real subtlety as Lou.

Katy O’Brian – who’s also a martial artist – is very good as Jackie, her first major screen role.

The rest of the central cast is also very good: Ed Harris doing a fine job as the creepy Lou Snr; Anna Baryshnikov as a ditzy – but dangerous – lesbian who wants Lou for herself; Jena Malone as Beth and Dave Franco as JJ.

Ben Fordesman’s cinematography conveys a sense of brooding – and also one of the vastness that surrounds the characters, suggesting a lostness in the universe. Music by Clint Mansell also adds to the tension.

Having done some bodybuilding in my time – and having once been to watch a competition – the way the gym and contest scenes are handled is excellent.

The scenes at the gun range also provide a commentary on the relationship between Americans and their guns.

All in all, a really excellent film.