This spare, luminously pure novel charts a secret gay relationship in post-industrial Wales Set during the late 1980s, against prevailing Aids paranoia and the Tories’ Section 28 bill forbidding the promotion of homosexuality in education, Anthony Shapland’s taut debut novel about the relationship between two men in the Welsh valleys packs a considerable punch. In an interview, Shapland suggests there was “a generational howl of film and literature about that era when legislation combined with moral attitudes and misconceptions”. Indeed, there are echoes of 80s queer cinema, such as the work of Derek Jarman and My Beautiful Laundrette, in the forbidden liaison between the men, who are known only as B and M throughout. The difference here is that their world is not metropolitan but suffocatingly provincial, a fact that adds considerably to their predicament.The novel begins on New Year’s Eve 1987, a time when “Don’t Die of Ignorance” HIV information leaflets were being pushed through...
Anthony Shapland's debut novel, "A Room Above a Shop," set in 1980s post-industrial Wales, depicts a secret and forbidden gay relationship between two men, B and M, against the backdrop of AIDS paranoia and Section 28 legislation. Their affair unfolds in a suffocatingly provincial environment, fraught with risk due to the homophobic community and M's established life. The novel explores themes of forbidden desire and societal constraints using muscular prose.
