Address Book

An Observer Best Books of 2021 as selected by Jackie Kay

New fiction from Costa-shortlisted author of Skin Lane takes us to seven different times and situations: from a civil partnership celebration to erotic obsession in a Victorian tenement, from a council-flat bedroom at the height of the AIDS crisis to a doctor's living-room in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic.

‘Address Book is peopled with lovers, battlers, adventurers and optimists. Neil Bartlett is a peerless chronicler of queer lives past and present.’—NIVEN GOVINDEN

Within the pages of this address book you will find not only names and places, but lives—with their everyday griefs and joys, and their everyday braveries.

Seven different times. Seven different situations. Seven different characters, each seeking to feel at home—somewhere or with someone. Let Bartlett lead you surefootedly between lives and locations, through decades of change to find hope in the strangest of places.

‘Neil Bartlett is an all-seeing wizard’—EDMUND WHITE

'Bartlett is a pioneer on and off the page and we are lucky to have him telling our stories.'—DAMIAN BARR