🔗 Share this article

The novelist Paul Bailey, who died in October aged 87, was renowned for a comic brilliance, deep empathy including for his deeply imperfect creations, and a sharpness that avoided being sterile. His literary works frequently delved into the influence of recollections in shaping lives, driven by clever, syncopated conversations. In addition to storytelling, he also excelled as a memoirist, poet, and more—this is an overview to the books he left behind.

---

The Ones to Keep You Company

Paul Bailey proved a gregarious individual, a skilled communicator with a love for “trivial chit-chat”, according to a fictional persona. Alongside pal Beryl Bainbridge often enjoyed the serial drama Coronation Street and discuss it over calls. This fondness for chatty conversations appears within his fictional works Trespasses (from 1970) along with the title Peter Smart’s Confessions (dating to 1977). Each includes a central male figure besieged by humorous, irritating, exaggerated personalities, frequently family members whose influence is inescapable. “Who wants to be normal anyway?” Ralph’s mum questions in the book Trespasses after he discloses his homosexuality. Similar to spending time with your most clever, daring companion.

---

The Ones to Make You Laugh and Cry

The novelist penned excellently regarding elderly life, at both ends of his writing journey. His initial fiction At the Jerusalem (1967) follows the life of Faith Gadny during her transition to an old people’s residence, in which other inhabitants provide kindness absent in employees, whose engagement via queries “Aren’t you watching television?”. In his penultimate novel Chapman’s Odyssey (from 2011), a senior in hospital alternates between clashing with physicians (“My wine selection is exclusive”, he insists when scolded for liver results) and being flooded by memories of his mother, lovers, literary figures such as Pip from Dickens or Emma from Austen. Both books include humorous dialogues however tinged with the inevitable conclusion. In Bailey’s fiction, grins are unreliable. In that book, “the matron grinned, then ended it abruptly”; The character giggles with unease if her actions are questioned. Within Chapman’s Odyssey, Harry cautions that “my smiles aren’t what they seem”. Your laughter, nonetheless, is sincere.

---

For the Reality Behind the Stories

Besides novels, The author excelled as a talented life writer, publishing two autobiographies. An Immaculate Mistake (published in 1990) stands as a masterpiece of memory, the heading taken 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 comments. “She understood this would captivate me.”) This book reveals the origins of flawed, caring, annoying mothers and fathers within his fiction. Additionally, it depicts a moving picture of a boy discovering his sexuality in the 1940s–50s, when same-sex acts were criminal, and his family found it odd that a son would purchase flowers for his mum; and of a would-be thespian (Bailey acted before writing) who memorized Hamlet at 15. His subsequent life story the book A Dog’s Life (published in 2004) concentrates on life with his mongrel puppy Circe, his ex-partner David, his love for Romania—which motivated later novels like Kitty and Virgil, Uncle Rudolf, and The Prince’s Boy—and heaps of rumors, featuring an anecdote regarding Iris Murdoch calling an audience member a “stupid cow”.

---

For Those Short on Time

The author’s fiction are mostly concise—the powerful Old Soldiers (1980) is just over 100 pages—yet for an even briefer option, explore his poems from later years. The two collections Inheritance (from 2019) and the title Joie de Vivre (from 2022) exhibit his cleverness, sympathy, exactness in brief format. These verses are rich with endings and beginnings. Two romantic motifs repeat: regarding his mum (“Now I’m closer—/ I have to say—/ than in life”) and for his partner Jeremy Trevathan. In Amazement, he describes the joy of enjoying “foolish television” side by side, ending with: “It’s remarkable, this simple act of consuming cheese and wine as darkness falls.”

---

For a Single Must-Read

There is little debate that Bailey’s most ambitious novel was the novel Gabriel’s Lament, nominated for the Booker in 1986. (He was a Booker judge in 1982, a task he hated.) This was the book the author was most proud of, even though “it drained me. It took everything out of me”. It relates Gabriel Harvey’s story, whose mum disappears and whose father turns into a intolerable pretentious person upon receiving money, and the events may link. It serves as a portrait of London in the 1900s, an account of psychological collapse, and both comic and tragic like his other works. Additionally, it prompted a sequel, Sugar Cane (from 1993), which Bailey researched by attending brothels to observe.