2021/023: The Inverts -- Crystal Jeans

"Marry me."
"Jesus, Bart. What are you trying to prove?"
..."Nothing. You're right. I like men. I do, I fucking well do! And you like women. Let's get married. We love each other, don't we?" [loc. 1122]

Bart and Bettina have grown up together, privileged and good-looking, too young to be personally affected by the Great War (though Bettina's older brother came home with a bad case of shellshock and a single arm). At the outset of the Roaring Twenties, they are discovering adult life, and coming (via separate experiences) to the same conclusion: they are both inverts. Bart is seduced by a gorgeous young French artist, Etienne, on a school trip to Paris; Bettina is caught in flagrante, in the school boiler room, with her friend Margo.

It seems inevitable that they should marry: they love one another, they share a sense of humour and a defensive prickliness, and neither of them is likely to be a good spouse to anybody. Cue wild parties, booze and drugs, a career in movies for Bart, a series of best-selling books by Bettina -- and, bookending it all, a murder mystery.

The blurb gives the impression that this is a light-hearted romp through the Twenties and Thirties, and it is often very funny: but it's also painful and sometimes depressing. Neither Bart nor Bettina is especially lucky in love, and despite their early promises to be kind to one another they treat one another very cruelly. Most importantly, though, they are not characters that I could warm to. There's a sneeriness to them, a disdain for their 'friends' and families, and a strong vein of hypocrisy in their attitudes. At different times, both try to overcome their innate prejudices: Bettina manages it during the Second World War when she's working as a rat-catcher, Bart achieves it from time to time, but they're both too selfish, too superficial, for it to really stick.

The language is lush and sensual, with a lot of food-based metaphors -- though these sometimes jar in conjunction with the frequent slurs against fatness. Descriptions of the physical often tend towards the earthy or even the gross: sweat, vomit, Bart's brush with the Spanish Flu. Glasses and cigarette butts are lipstick-stained, and everyone has bad breath. There is a relentless insistence on bodily functions: Bettina letting loose a long-held fart, Bart burping into his whisky, a newborn baby already leaking urine.

Which is not to say that the story isn't interesting: the arc of Bettina and Bart's relationship with each other and their myriad affairs, the raucous parties and decadent soirees of the Twenties and Thirties, the secrets within families and the openly queer folk in the London arts milieu. Some fun cameos, some poignant moments: if only they had happened to nicer people ...

Thanks to Netgalley for the free review copy!