Adam Mars-Jones

Winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize. 'I took one look at him, and I saw what he really wanted.' On the Sunday of his eighteenth birthday, in 1975, Colin takes a walk on Box Hill, a biker hang-out in Surrey. Timid, awkward, and very much out of his element, he accidentally trips over Ray, a biker taking a nap under a tree. Ray takes immediate control of the situation, and Colin moves in with him that night. A sizzling, sometimes shocking, and strangely tragic love story between two men, Box Hill is a stunning novel of desire and domination by one of Britain's most accomplished writers. 'Mars-Jones's prose is exceptionally nimble, dry, humorously restrained, very English, with a little Nabokovian velvet too. He can describe more or less anything and make it interesting.' -James Wood, London Review of Books 'A tender exploration of the love that truly dare not speak its name - that between master and slave. On his 18th birthday, Colin literally stumbles upon a strapping biker twice his age, and falls into a long-term relationship characterised by devotion, mystery, and submission. In plain unadorned prose, Mars-Jones shows us the tender, everyday nature of this. Self-deprecating, sad, and wise.' -Fiona McGregor 'I very much enjoyed Box Hill. It is a characteristic Mars-Jones mixture of the shocking, the endearing, the funny, and the sad, with an unforgettable narrator. The sociological detail is as ever acutely entertaining.' -Margaret Drabble

Box Hill

Batlava Lake

'Late Spring, directed and co-written by Yasujiro Ozu, was released in 1949, which makes it an old film, or a film that has been new for a long time...' So begins this remarkable essay in narrative reconstruction, which elicits a world of meanings from the reticences of one classic Japanese movie, and reserves to the very end a resolution of its mystery. Adam Mars-Jones gives a virtuoso comeback performance as that lost figure from the earl days of cinema: the film explainer. There has never been a film book like this one.

Noriko Smiling

Chris Bickerton

A Citizen's Guide - A Pelican Introduction

European Union

William and Terry chanced upon monogamy before it became the symbol of a world ruled by illness and denial. The author--an acclaimed voice in the gay community--offers a brilliant, hilarious, and touching novel about love and desire in the plague years.

The Waters of Thirst

The film review can be a little work of art, not just a consumer guide—as is manifest in this collection by one of the United Kingdom’s foremost doyennes of the contemporary silver screen. Covering more than thirty years of film releases, celebrated critic Adam Mars-Jones guides us through the most entertaining, most appalling, and most fantastic films of his viewing lifetime, interweaving his original film reviews with new insights and reflections. Mars-Jones answers the questions that no other critic has even bothered to ask. What is Twister really about? How many Steven Spielbergs are there? (Spoiler: he counts thirteen). How many of them are worth anything? Who had the greatest slow-burn career in the movies? (Clue: he taught Montgomery Clift how to roll a cigarette.) And which science-fiction film features the most haunting use of slime? Funny, combative, and revealing, Second Sight is a celebration of the artform that maintains the strongest hold on the modern imagination.

The Selected Film Writing of Adam Mars-Jones

Second Sight

An intimate, funny and incredibly poignant coming of age story.

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Pilcrow

Meet John Cromer, one of the most unusual heroes in modern fiction. If the minority is always right then John is practically infallible. Growing up disabled and gay in the 1950's, circumstances force John from an early age to develop an intense and vivid internal world. As his character develops, this ability to transcend external circumstance through his own strength of character proves an invaluable asset. Extremely funny and incredibly poignant, this is a major new novel from a writer at the height of his powers.

Hypo and Vanilla are two strongly contrasting novellas, sharing themes of love and grief.

Hypo Vanilla

The winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize A sizzling and deeply touching love story between two men, set in the gay biker community of 1970s London In Box Hill, a vivid coming-of-age novel, a young man suddenly wakes up to his gay self—on his eighteenth birthday, when he receives the best gift ever: love and sex. In the woodsy cruising grounds of Box Hill, chubby Colin literally stumbles over glamorous Ray—ten years older, leather-clad, cool, handsome, a biker, and a top. (Colin, if largely unformed, is nevertheless decidedly a bottom.) Colin narrates his love—conveying how mind-blowing being with Ray is—in comically humble-pie terms. “If there are leaders then there must be followers, and I had followership skills in plenty just waiting to be tapped. To this day I can’t see a fat kid in shorts without wanting to rush over and give him what comfort I can. To tell him it won’t always be like this.” Mars-Jones uses Colin’s naivete to give a fresh view of the world and of love. Before long, however, homophobia, class, family strife, and loss rear their ugly heads. Yet in the end, it seems Colin’s modest view oddly takes in the widest horizon: he learns that “people can care about anything.” A surprise and a pleasure, Box Hill is an intensely moving short novel.

Adam Mars-Jones

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