As Luck Would Have it

When Richard agrees to share a flat with Chuck, his life takes a strange new lurch. Chuck is enormous, ebullient, and more than a trifle camp. He's also violently jealous of Richard and his growing friendship with George. . . Set in the bedsitter world of South Kensington in 1950s, AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT is a strikingly original first novel, told in a voice unlike any you have encountered in modern fiction. Since first publication in 1995, it has gained an extraordinary reputation and went on to win the Sagittarius Award for 1996. 'Strange and compelling' Edmund White OBSERVER 'Very odd and original' Alan Hollinghurst HAMPSTEAD & HIGHGATE EXPRESS (Books of the Year). 'A hilarious book. . . 'Rachel Cusk TIMES (Books of the Year) 'Vivid and peculiar. . Lock writes almost as elegantly as Alan Hollinghurst. . . . AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT is memorable. ' Kate Kellaway, OBSERVER

Set in London in the 1950s, this first novel by a 70-year-old painter, script writer and stage designer seems born of all the wisdom and experience that must have preceded it. So patiently written that its discreetly rendered moments transcend the margins of its methodical chapters, it tells the story of Richard, an orphan who haltingly relates the evolution of his curious adulthood and his tenacious desire to learn how to love. A rather secretive but unapologetic homosexual whose boyhood intimacies were limited by the institutional setting in which he was raised, Richard finds himself sharing his life with Chuck and George, two men whose disturbing incapacity to accommodate their own true natures opens the way for Richard's quest for selfhood. Lock's prose is clear, but there's always an air of mystery, so that even the most antically demonstrative dramas are suffused with smoky uncertainty. A surprise, coincidental ending might have marred the subtle integrity of this novel, but Lock is so cunning, and his inclusion of a novel within the novel so sly, that instead of falling flat, Richard's tale takes on new reflective dimensions.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this haunting, mesmerizing first novel by playwright Lock, a newly independent young man tells of his first foray into the adult world--a world he finds peopled with eccentrics, manipulators, and other mysterious types. When Richard, who is new to London, agrees to share an apartment with Chuck (a flamboyant young man whom he recently met), his whole life changes. Chuck, or "Auntie Zee," as he refers to himself, is insanely jealous of Richard's new friendships with other men and begins a campaign of terror designed to frighten Richard away from them. As Chuck becomes progressively more paranoid and violent, the tension in the story builds until the inevitable confrontation, an explosive event that finally convinces Richard to move on. A well-paced, well-written, delightfully suspenseful story with an excellent surprise ending. Kathleen Hughes