🔗 Share this article

Esteemed author Paul Bailey, whose life ended last autumn at 87, was renowned for possessing a comic brilliance, profound compassion including for his deeply imperfect creations, and a sharpness that avoided being sterile. His fiction frequently delved into the influence of recollections within personal journeys, driven by clever, syncopated conversations. Beyond novels, he worked as a poet, memoir writer, and additional roles—this is an overview to the volumes he authored.

---

The Ones to Keep You Company

Bailey was a social being, an excellent talker with a love for lighthearted gossip, in the words of a creation. Together with companion author Beryl Bainbridge often enjoyed the TV show Coronation Street and analyze it telephonically. This enjoyment of chatty conversations shines through in his novels the novel Trespasses (1970) as well as Peter Smart’s Confessions (released in 1977). Both feature a central male figure encircled by comic, maddening, theatrical individuals, frequently family members whose impact cannot be avoided. “Why would anyone desire normality?” queries Ralph’s mother within Trespasses upon his coming out. Comparable to hanging out with your smartest, cheekiest pal.

---

The Ones to Make You Laugh and Cry

The novelist penned superbly on old age, early and late in his career. His initial fiction At the Jerusalem (published in 1967) traces the life of Faith Gadny during her transition to a nursing home, where fellow residents offer warmth missing from caregivers, whose engagement via queries “Aren’t you watching television?”. In the novel before his final Chapman’s Odyssey (released in 2011), a senior in hospital switches between disputing with medics (“My wine selection is exclusive”, he states when scolded for liver results) and being flooded by memories of his mother, lovers, literary figures like Dickens’s Pip to Austen’s Emma. Each volume include funny exchanges however tinged with approaching finality. Throughout his novels, grins are unreliable. In that book, “the matron grinned, then ended it abruptly”; The character giggles with unease when confronted about her behavior. In Chapman’s Odyssey, Harry advises that “my laughter is not genuine”. Readers’ smiles, however, are authentic.

---

For the Reality Behind the Stories

Besides novels, The author excelled as a skilled autobiographer, releasing two self-written volumes. the memoir An Immaculate Mistake (1990) stands as a masterpiece of recollection, its name coming from his mother’s words calling him “our error” and saying he shouldn’t exist. (“Elderly, she disclosed hidden truths,” he notes. “This secret, she realized, would intrigue me.”) This book reveals the roots for confused, affectionate, irritating parental figures in his novels. Additionally, it depicts a moving picture of a homosexual young man during the mid-20th century, when homosexuality was illegal, and his kin viewed it as suspicious that a son would purchase flowers for his mum; and of an aspiring actor (Paul Bailey performed prior to authoring) who memorized Hamlet at 15. His subsequent life story A Dog’s Life (from 2004) centers on life with his mongrel puppy Circe, his former partner David, his affection for Romania—which inspired later novels like Kitty and Virgil, Uncle Rudolf, as well as the book The Prince’s Boy—and loads of chatter, including a tale regarding Iris Murdoch labeling a listener an “idiot”.

---

For Those Short on Time

Bailey’s novels are mostly concise—the impactful Old Soldiers (1980) is just over 100 pages—however, for a more condensed choice, sample his verse in his final phase. The pair of volumes Inheritance (2019) and Joie de Vivre (from 2022) display Bailey’s wit, empathy, precision in condensed form. These poems contain death and life. Two love themes recur: regarding his mum (“I’m closer to you now – / I need to tell you – / than I ever was in life”) and for his partner Jeremy Trevathan. Within the poem Amazement, he describes the joy of “watching an idiotic TV entertainment” together, finishing with: “It’s amazing, somehow, to eat cheese and sip wine while the world darkens.”

---

If You Only Read One

Most agree that Bailey’s most ambitious novel remains Gabriel’s Lament, nominated for the Booker in 1986. (He was a Booker judge in 1982, a role he disliked.) This was the book Bailey felt proudest of, although “it drained me. It took everything out of me”. It tells the narrative of Gabriel Harvey, with a missing mother while his dad transforms into an unbearable snob upon receiving money, and the two might be related. It serves as a portrait of the city in that era, an account of psychological collapse, and as funny and sad like his other works. To continue, it led to a follow-up, Sugar Cane (published in 1993), that he investigated by attending brothels to observe.