"A Story about Gay London": Peter Ackroyd's Three Brothers

Why did Peter Ackroyd's autobiographical fifteenth novel Three Brothers [and Kindle] launch so tepidly in the U.S. three months ago? Is it a rushed effort from a too-prolific author who has also written more than 30 books of nonfiction? Or is it too queer for American critics? (And for its publisher, who degayed the flap copy.) The novel follows Harry, Daniel, and Sam Hanway from grim postwar Camden to 1970s Soho. In adulthood the boys grow apart yet each life intersects with the same Londoners, the boorish newspaper baron Sir Martin Flaxman, a slumlord Asher Ruppta, and -- what many critics consider the most likable character in the novel -- a gay hustler/pickpocket called Sparkler.

The Express: "What starts as a kind of social history of life in the capital after the war (Ackroyd has also written a history of London and it shows) turns into a melodramatic potboiler, with blackmail, murder and madness at its heart...this also turns into a story about gay London...Just about all of the main male characters are gay (including the straight ones) and one of the few female characters in Three Brothers is at pains to stress that she doesn't like sex...However, if you are in the mood for a story that gathers pace after a slow start and will not conform to expectation, while throwing in a dash of the supernatural, this is entertaining and a lot of fun."

The Telegraph: "Three Brothers is an alternative autobiography, a ghost story and a murder mystery all in one slim volume. Dickens, Blake and Eliot – all subjects of lives by Ackroyd – cast shadows over the three-ply narrative that is full of chance and coincidence, 'alliances and affinities', 'contenders and young pretenders', shape-shifters and shirt-lifters. Offended? Then this clever, camp novel – which includes a chapter titled 'Sausage Land' – is definitely not for you...The brilliant result is the quintessence of Ackroyd."

Among the best of his early novels are The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), Hawksmoor (winner of a Whitbread), and Chatterton, shortlisted for the Booker.