At war for The Boy I Love

I’m talking about The Boy I Love by William Hussey. I don’t think this is Hussey’s second book, but it’s the second book of his I’ve read – the first being The Outrage. He is another one of those authors that I have no good explanation for why it’s taken me so long to get to another of his books, especially when I’ve seen that stuff has come out.

The blurb says 1916. Returning to the Front after injury, nineteen-year-old Stephen wonder what he’s fighting for. Then he meets Private Danny McCormick, a smart, talented new recruit. From their first meeting, there’s something undeniable between them – something forbidden by both society and the army. Determined to protect Danny, Stephen must face down the ignorance of his superiors as well as the onslaught of German shells and sniper fire. As the summer ticks down to the Battle of the Somme, will Stephen and Danny’s love save them – or condemn them?

We start off with Stephen on a train, waiting to depart, thinking about the friend he lost to the war – someone he was clearly close to – that he’s started drawing, when Danny comes in and notices how talented a drawer he is after he drops the paper. He then ends up in a meeting where he’s given the names of his new troop, and he ends up requesting Danny to be in it, despite not saying more than a few words to him, and his upper tells him basically how bad it is to have gays in the battalion and that he’d kill them if he ever found any. But basically, Gemma Collins-core, Stephen wants Danny to be his soldier-servant so potentially save him from the war so he can make amends to what happened to his old platoon.

So I don’t like war – as a concept, but also in media. Wild, imagine someone enjoying war. For me, I’m meaning I don’t really care about war media – it doesn’t appeal to me – I only played the Call of Duty games on Xbox 360 when I was a teen because all my friends at the time did. I tried playing them when I was older but literally never cared. Because of that, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. I’ve never really read any other books set in wars, not real ones anyway, a fantasy war, like the one in the Dragon Age books doesn’t count to me. Getting into this, I didn’t know, conceptually, what I was expecting. I didn’t know whether I was going to be seeing the characters on the front lines, in the trenches – both literally and figuratively – or what. So when the first half of the book was more or less just travelling that kind of took me out. You do end up seeing all the men in the trenches throughout the second half of the book. I will also say, surprised no one contracted trench foot, the book had space for a trench foot sub-plot, why not? Stand up trench foot nation. Although, if you’ve got trench foot, you might not be able to.

The exploration of Stephen’s character was a really interesting one to me. He’s made lieutenant in the army at nineteen, and the whole time, he has been heralded for his bravery, despite the fact he feels like a fraud. Not only was he a child when he went to the frontlines the first time around, he had to come back with his trauma and then return a year later, now in charge of a whole platoon. The way that he kept himself throughout the book, he was a stronger man than I would have been in his position.

I understand that it was the reality of queer people in the 1910s, and definitely still is the reality of queer people in certain places today, but it was so sad seeing Stephen and Danny’s main interactions being stolen, and such a bulk of them being on page being the two of them talking by mouthing words and passing notes. Especially when they were (literally) in the trenches and just hounded by a swathe of sweaty unwashed men, having no opportunity for privacy. There was a phrase used in the book – stealing moments – and I know it’s a well-used phrase, but in the instance of this book, that’s exactly what it was. Attitudes were absolutely reflected in the time, so it made sense why there were so few people that even though they weren’t saying it aloud, were supportive of Stephen.

Despite the blurb saying that Stephen was going to fight to save Danny, I never expected a happy ending for the two of them. I expected that one, or both of them, was going to die – although, leaning more to one of them. I figured that it would be either Danny dying and Stephen living a haunted life, having failed to save Danny, or for Stephen to die, and POV switch to Danny, trying to navigate his life post-war without Stephen. Despite this book coming out last year, I’m going to put a [SPOILER WARNING] here. Neither die. The book ends in present time (lol) with Stephen falling unconscious after being caught in an explosion, and then we hope two years later, where he’s out of prison, living in a shit hole. He was sent to prison for his indecency getting exposed, and the two of them meet up at this gallery in London. Now, because I know this was set in the 1910s, obviously things aren’t going to be magically good for either of them, and that’s acknowledged in the book, but I did want more from the ending. I’m not faulting the ending, let me state that now. I’m just greedy and wanted more from it. You know, Stephen is thrown in prison – this book is less than 300 pages, by the way – so let me see some of that prison, please. He’s been struggling in one way, let me see him struggle in another form before I find out whether the two get back together. Also, I’d have like to have seen how he felt post-war, knowing that Danny survived, since his whole goal was to “save” Danny. [SPOILERS END]

Anyway, I definitely sat in a weird spot with this book in that it was a set-up (wartime) that I know I’m not a fan of, but I still found myself incredibly moved by the content I consumed.

Okay, bye.