🔗 Share this article Exploring the Creative Universe of Paul Bailey The novelist Paul Bailey, who died in October aged 87, was renowned for possessing a comic brilliance, profound compassion extending to his most flawed characters, and a cleverness that was never clinical. His literary works often explored the role of remembrance within personal journeys, propelled by sharp, rhythmic dialogue. In addition to storytelling, he worked as a memoirist, poet, and more—here is a guide to the volumes he authored. The Ones to Keep You Company The author appeared as a social being, an excellent talker who adored “trivial chit-chat”, as one character notes. Alongside pal Beryl Bainbridge often enjoyed the serial drama Coronation Street and analyze it telephonically. This enjoyment of informal dialogues shines through in his fictional works the novel Trespasses (from 1970) and Peter Smart’s Confessions (1977). Each includes a main male protagonist besieged by humorous, irritating, exaggerated personalities, usually kin whose impact cannot be avoided. “Who wants to be normal anyway?” asks the mother of Ralph in the book Trespasses upon his coming out. Like an evening with your most clever, daring companion. The Ones to Make You Laugh and Cry Paul Bailey authored brilliantly about aging, throughout his literary path. His initial fiction At the Jerusalem (1967) traces the journey of Faith Gadny as she adjusts to a care facility, in which other inhabitants offer warmth lacking from staff, whose concern by asking “Aren’t you watching television?”. In the novel before his final Chapman’s Odyssey (2011), a senior in hospital switches between clashing with physicians (“I consume only fine wines”, he insists following criticism of his liver) and being flooded by memories involving his mum, partners, classic characters including Pip by Dickens and Emma by Austen. The two works contain comic interactions but marked by impending endings. In his stories, grins are unreliable. In At the Jerusalem, “the matron smiled, shut the smile off quickly”; The character giggles with unease if her actions are questioned. In that novel, Harry advises that “my grins are misleading”. Your laughter, nonetheless, is sincere. To Understand the Truth Beneath the Tales Apart from his stories, Bailey was a skilled autobiographer, releasing two self-written volumes. An Immaculate Mistake (from 1990) is a masterwork of recollection, its title derived from his mum’s statement labeling him an “accident” and questioning his presence. (“She was old now, and letting go of her secrets,” he comments. “This secret, she realized, would intrigue me.”) This book reveals the origins of misguided, loving, frustrating parents throughout his books. It also paints an evocative portrait of a gay youth in the 1940s–50s, during a time of anti-gay laws, and his relatives considered it strange that a son would purchase flowers for his mum; and of a hopeful performer (The writer was on stage preceding his literary career) who learned Hamlet by age fifteen. His follow-up autobiography A Dog’s Life (published in 2004) centers on life with his mongrel puppy Circe, his ex-partner David, his love for Romania—which motivated later novels like the novel Kitty and Virgil, the title Uncle Rudolf, as well as The Prince’s Boy—and loads of chatter, including a tale about Iris Murdoch calling an audience member an “idiot”. When Time Is Limited Bailey’s novels are mostly concise—the powerful Old Soldiers (from 1980) is just over 100 pages—but for something shorter, try his poetry from his later career. The two collections Inheritance (from 2019) and Joie de Vivre (2022) exhibit Bailey’s wit, empathy, precision in brief format. These poems are full of endings and beginnings. Two romantic motifs repeat: about his parent (“Now I’m closer—/ I have to say—/ than in life”) and for his partner Jeremy Trevathan. In Amazement, he describes the pleasure in “watching an idiotic TV entertainment” together, ending with: “It’s amazing, somehow, to eat cheese and sip wine while the world darkens.” For a Single Must-Read Most agree that the author’s most expansive book remains Gabriel’s Lament, shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1986. (He was a Booker judge in 1982, a task he hated.) This work the author was most proud of, even though “it exhausted him completely”. It tells the tale of Gabriel Harvey, with a missing mother and whose father turns into an insufferable elitist after inheriting wealth, and the two might be related. It acts as a representation of 20th-century London, a tale of emotional unraveling, and equally humorous and sorrowful similar to his entire output. For more, it inspired a follow-up, Sugar Cane (published in 1993), that he investigated by visiting brothels as an observer.