Bratton has created a marvelously detailed world of supernumerary aristocrats ... In Hal, Bratton offers a psychologically acute portrait of the kind of trauma-born narcissists who yo-yo between judging everyone else as beneath them and hating themselves for those very judgments. But a portrait is not a novel, which depends as much on plot and action as it does character and world-building. Bratton has accurately drawn a protagonist stuck still by his pain, and the result is a story that for long stretches also feels stuck itself ... By giving Hal a direct and backward-looking explanation for his actions... Henry Henry obviates the delicious questions about his behavior. Sure, Hal’s self-aware about his conduct, but he doesn’t seem to have agency over it, and thus lacks that Shakespearean moral complexity. And without that, Henry Henry feels well written but inert.
Bratton observes up close, with a scientific focus on bodies in all their vigour and fragility ... Bratton writes about this rarefied milieu with a mix of fascination and dismay. There’s satire here, much of it subtle and some of it very funny, but the novel is primarily a sympathetic one about Hal’s attempts to come to terms with his own behaviour and his father’s legacy ... Henry Henry is far from perfect, and whether it stands or falls will depend on how interesting you find Hal’s world, but its deeply felt pages fly by.
The early chapters are quite fun. Bratton has a sharp eye for the absurdities of the white-saviour ex-public-schoolboy ... The antics of a spendthrift trustafarian just don’t cut the same dash as the rumbling majesty of Shakespeare’s work ... But the book’s greatest issue is an invention of Bratton’s. In a grand reveal, it becomes clear that Hal’s father has been sexually abusing his son. The first time this abuse is described, it scalds. But as the novel progresses, Bratton runs out of road ... When Bratton allows his writing to breathe, you glimpse a fresher, more expansive novel.
