I’d spent five years not wanting to be helped. And it had taken nearly losing my job, dating a guy I would never have considered dating... and having some dick from a nightclub feel sorry for me in the Guardian for me to realise that I hadn’t been as safe as I thought I was. [p. 394]
Luc has grown up with a terrible handicap: he is the children of famous, estranged, rock-star parents. This has made him tabloid fodder, culminating five years ago in his ex selling all Luc's secrets to the tabloids. Since then Luc has lived a rather reclusive life, with a small group of good friends and a solid relationship with his mum (who is awesome).
Unfortunately Luc makes the mistake of chatting to a bloke at a party and then being photographed tripping and falling -- or, as the red-tops would have it, 'drunkenly staggering out of a nightclub'. Luc's employers, the Coleoptera Research and Protection Project (an entertainingly-acronymed charity devoted to saving dung-beetles), require him to find an 'appropriate' boyfriend before his antics drive away the sponsors.
His friends rally round, and Token Straight Friend [sic] Bridget suggests the only other gay man she knows, barrister Oliver Blackwood, who's previously made it clear that he wants nothing to do with Luc. Nevertheless, needs must: Oliver, too, has a social engagement for which he needs a significant other. Cue operation Fake Boyfriend, which gradually metamorphoses into something rather more sincere.
This is a light-hearted read with some dark undercurrents. Luc's mother is an absolute delight, but his father is ... less so. Luc himself has spent so long pushing people away for fear of getting hurt that he's forgotten how to let people in. And Oliver is not without his own issues, though they're initially less visible through the polished and principled exterior.
The supporting cast were great, and generally well-rounded, especially Bridget (who works in publishing and endures a succession of hilarious-to-everyone-else crises) and Alex (Luc's incredibly dense colleague: unable to distinguish between jury trials and badgers). I also loved the different ways in which those close to Luc accept him with all his bitterness and damage.
Despite Luc's hollowness and depression, he is a hilarious first-person narrator, even if some of his most barbed asides are aimed at himself. In a way it's not just Luc learning to love someone else, but also rediscovering a sense of self-worth.
Boyfriend Material was the perfect read for a November evening in lockdown. It cheered me massively, and I intend to read more by Alexis Hall.
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