David Jays
A Romanian in Bohemia
Dinu Grigorescu – ‘Romanian by birth, French by choice and English by accident’ – recalls a tale of lost love. He is close to sixty and close to death in his Marylebone flat, but takes us back to his gorgeous youth (he looks, we’re repeatedly told, like Rudolf Valentino) in 1920s Paris. As the 19-year-old son of a moneybags businessman, he was sent there from Bucharest to gain polish, indulge his literary ambitions and lose his cherry in the traditional fashion amid la vie de Bohème.
Young Dinu, however, is already aware that his taste doesn’t run to even the most bosomy Parisian tarts. Instead, he follows gossip to Monsieur Albert’s exclusive male establishment where, among the ‘purveyors of naughtiness’, he finds hairy Honoré, ‘a beast beyond compare’. Young Dinu discovers that the hirsute hooker is
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Clayton’s book may be unusual in that she avoids the British biographical tradition of combining amateur psychoanalysis with elevated gossip. But it is perfect on its own terms.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/she-carved-her-own-way
'Wilson’s target is less a straightforward biography than a sifting of Lawrence’s legacy for what remains urgent and alive, the aim being to shed its infernal baggage in search of an abiding paradise.'
@nemoloris on a new life of D H Lawrence.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/sex-was-a-mystery-to-him
'One of the gloomiest, most depressing and yet most gripping crime novels I have read in a long time.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews new books by @JaneCaseyAuthor, @FrankRGardner, @gregbuchanan, @AuthorSJBolton, @ajaychow, @adeleparks, @PGJonesVenice and more.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/may-2021-crime-round-up