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Esteemed author Paul Bailey, whose life ended last autumn at 87, was renowned for a humorous talent, intense sympathy including for the worst personalities in his stories, and a sharpness that never felt cold. His fiction repeatedly investigated the power of memory within personal journeys, fueled by clever, syncopated conversations. In addition to storytelling, he worked as a memoirist, poet, and more—here is a guide to the volumes he authored.

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Books for Companionship

The author appeared as a gregarious individual, a master conversationalist fond of lighthearted gossip, in the words of a creation. Alongside pal Beryl Bainbridge would watch the TV show Coronation Street and analyze it telephonically. This enjoyment of chatty conversations shines through in his fictional works the book Trespasses (1970) along with Peter Smart’s Confessions (1977). Both feature a leading man encircled by humorous, irritating, exaggerated personalities, often close relatives whose influence is inescapable. “Why would anyone desire normality?” asks the mother of Ralph in the book Trespasses upon his coming out. Like an evening with your wittiest, boldest friend.

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Books Blending Humor and Sorrow

Bailey wrote brilliantly about aging, throughout his literary path. His initial fiction the novel At the Jerusalem (from 1967) traces the journey of Faith Gadny as she adjusts to a nursing home, in which other inhabitants offer warmth absent in employees, whose engagement through questions “Why not view the TV, ladies?”. In his penultimate novel Chapman’s Odyssey (released in 2011), an elderly hospitalized man alternates between clashing with physicians (“I consume only fine wines”, he affirms after reprimands over liver tests) and confronting past remembrances of his mother, lovers, literary figures like Dickens’s Pip to Austen’s Emma. Each volume contain humorous dialogues yet shadowed by approaching finality. In Bailey’s fiction, smiles are deceptive. Within At the Jerusalem, “the matron beamed, then stopped suddenly”; Faith Gadny chuckles anxiously if her actions are questioned. In Chapman’s Odyssey, Harry advises that “my grins are misleading”. Your laughter, nonetheless, is sincere.

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If You Want the Facts Behind the Fiction

Apart from his stories, The author excelled as a talented life writer, releasing two self-written volumes. An Immaculate Mistake (published in 1990) is a masterwork of recollection, its name coming from his mum’s statement calling him “our error” and saying he shouldn’t exist. (“She was old now, and letting go of her secrets,” he notes. “This secret, she realized, would intrigue me.”) Within these pages appear the roots of flawed, caring, annoying mothers and fathers throughout his books. It likewise portrays a beautiful image of a homosexual young man in the 1940s–50s, when homosexuality was illegal, and his kin viewed it as suspicious that a son would purchase flowers for his mum; and of a hopeful performer (Bailey acted preceding his literary career) who learned Hamlet by age fifteen. His subsequent life story A Dog’s Life (published in 2004) concentrates on life with his mongrel puppy Circe, his previous lover David, his affection for Romania—that influenced subsequent books such as the novel Kitty and Virgil, Uncle Rudolf, and The Prince’s Boy—and plenty of gossip, with a story involving author Iris Murdoch dubbing a participant a “stupid cow”.

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When Time Is Limited

Bailey’s novels tend to be short—the powerful Old Soldiers (1980) is barely 100 pages—however, for a more condensed choice, explore his poems in his final phase. The two collections Inheritance (published in 2019) and Joie de Vivre (2022) display Bailey’s wit, empathy, precision in brief format. These writings are full of endings and beginnings. Two love themes recur: regarding his mum (“I feel nearer to you now—/ I must confess—/ than when you lived”) and for his spouse Jeremy Trevathan. Within the poem Amazement, he writes of the happiness from viewing “a silly TV show” as a couple, concluding with: “It’s awesome, in its way, this act of eating cheese / and drinking wine, as the world keeps darkening.”

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If You Only Read One

There is little debate that the author’s most expansive book is the novel Gabriel’s Lament, nominated for the Booker in 1986. (He was a Booker judge in 1982, a role he disliked.) This novel the author was most proud of, although “it exhausted him completely”. It follows the narrative of Gabriel Harvey, whose mother vanishes 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 subsequent book, Sugar Cane (published in 1993), which the author studied by attending brothels to observe.