“PG danced a kind of four-step around Jerome’s legs as he phoned his secretary to cancel an invitation to a warlock.” This wonderful novel – first published in 1965 – is tumbling with such sentences, and I hope this reprint from the redoubtable Faber Editions will bring it to a whole new audience. It was the first published novel of Henry Van Dyke, a Black author who became known for his witty but nuanced exploration of race, class, and sexuality. The novel – a comedy with shades of Waugh, Capote and Wodehouse – centres on Oliver, a young queer Black man living in the household of Etta Klein, a wealthy white widow. Oliver resides there with his aunt, who serves as Etta’s housekeeper and close companion. The plot is slight – there’s some business involving Etta and Oliver’s aunt hiring a psychic (the aforementioned “warlock”) in order to contact Etta’s dead son – but it manages to be hilarious while also hitting profound themes. Many “Black” novels of the time were expected to fit neatly into the genre of “protest literature” (heavy, political, tragic), but Van Dyke sidesteps that. Instead, his (tragi) comedy of manners uses humour in a way that feels subversive, balancing the absurd with the systemic. Race, privilege, identity, sexuality, and class are all examined – and the gilded-cage dynamic between Etta, Oliver, and his aunt is endlessly fascinating. Everything is also done with such a lightness of touch that the reader never feels like they’re being battered over the head with a big pole (or some weighty polemic). RM

Faber Editions