Beautiful and devastating, Nova Scotia House is a difficult yet powerful read. The writing style took some getting used to but it doesn't take away from the story.

A beautiful book about queer love, queer magic and grief. Not just grief for the people we lose, but also for the cities we live in and their histories. One of the things that struck me was the elegy to places lost as London has changed through the decades - the queer spaces, the green spaces, the places where people could come together and build new communities and new ways of living.

Like a few other people, I found the narrative style difficult at first and a bit annoying to get a handle on. Then, around halfway through, I found myself getting into the rhythm of things and being swept up by the prose. I did feel that it lost a bit of its impact towards the end and got a bit annoying, but the beauty of the story more than makes up for any minor annoyances over form and style.

It reminded me of Derek Jarman's Modern Nature, a beautiful book in its own right. It's a story that will linger in the memory long after the final page is turned.

Charlie Porter’s debut novel, Nova Scotia House, is a poignant and deeply moving exploration of love, loss, and the resilience of the human spirit. Set against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis and its devastating impact on the queer community, this novel is both a love story and a lament, weaving together the personal and the political with remarkable grace.

The story follows Johnny Grant, a man grappling with grief and the weight of memories after the death of his long-time partner, Jerry Field. Their relationship—beginning when Johnny was just 19 and Jerry was 45—was unconventional, passionate, and deeply transformative. Together, they built a life at Nova Scotia House, a sanctuary that became a symbol of their love and the radical philosophies they embraced. Now, with Jerry gone, Johnny is left to navigate a world that feels irrevocably changed.

Porter’s narrative shifts seamlessly between past and present, immersing readers in the vibrant, defiant queer culture of the 1980s while also confronting the pain and loss that followed. Through Johnny’s reflections, we witness the joy, creativity, and experimentation of a community that refused to conform, even as it faced unimaginable tragedy. The novel is a testament to the enduring power of love and the importance of preserving stories that might otherwise be forgotten.

What makes Nova Scotia House truly stand out is its intimacy and authenticity. Porter’s prose is lyrical and evocative, capturing the complexities of human relationships with a rare sensitivity. The characters feel real and fully realized, their struggles and triumphs resonating long after the final page. Johnny’s journey—both inward and outward—is a powerful reminder of the ways in which we carry our loved ones with us, even as we forge new paths forward.

This is a novel that will stay with you. It is a celebration of queer life, a tribute to those lost, and a call to honour the past while embracing the future. Charlie Porter has crafted a debut that is not only deeply affecting but also urgently necessary. A great read for anyone who appreciate emotionally rich, character-driven stories; those interested in queer history and the AIDS crisis

This book was uncomfortable to read. It is meant to be uncomfortable. It is meant, I think, to shake us out of the ease with which we accept our lives and question what we value and what we're doing with our one wild and precious life.

Written in a style akin to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway stream of consciousness, the protagonist dips from his current situation, frozen in time, living in a borrowed space he has carved out from the mainstream, still grieving the most important relationship of his life, back to the birth of his adulthood and the one, pivotal relationship of his life. This asks questions about queer spaces, the value of queer lives and questions the sacrifice, literal and metaphorical of the AIDS generation and what we do with that grief and loss and whether it has left any wisdom or insight behind that might allow for different spaces and ways of living to open up in future.

There is so much here to unpack. This is a beautiful, disturbing elegy of a book that paves the way for a reckoning and hope for a queerer, greener future.

First of all, thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press for providing me with the eARC of this book!

“Others want us to seek comfort in forgetting. To seek solace in forgetting. To forget would be to assimilate. We live with our wounds they never close.” – P. 209.

Nova Scotia House reads like one long stream of consciousness – emotional, convoluted, panicked, resilient. While some will certainly be put off by the style of narration, it lends itself perfectly to the story being told. Johnny is stuck but also isn’t, wants to hold on to the past but also doesn’t want to get trapped, wants to move forward but doesn’t want to forget.

Nova Scotia House is a poignant story of love, community, loss and grief, injustice and perseverance. It’s a vivid display of the lives and losses of an entire generation of queer men and more than once it had me tear up and cry for the lives we’ve lost due to negligence and prejudice.
This story is also a clear rejection of assimilation, of bowing to normality and in that it brings hope, highlights the importance of building community. In our modern individualist age, it’s a stark reminder of what can be possible if you come together with your fellow human beings.

An incredible read I would recommend to everybody.

Charlie Porter's debut novel 'Nova Scotia House' is a story of love and loss set in the gay community at the time of the AIDS epidemic. Johnny was 19 when he fell in love with the much older Jerry who was HIV positiv. Johnny reflects on their relationship in an inner monologue. The stream of consciousness took a little while to get used to. In the end I found that the unusual writing style suited the atmosphere of the story. The novel gives a great insight into the gay community during that time and the sadness and hope that prevailed in those years.

This was quite a hard read for me, the style of writing is bold, barren and confronting at times. I'm assuming that the text will be a little better laid out in the final copy!

As for the novel itself, it leaves very little to the imagination so I could see many being shocked by the honesty writing. I'm definitely not the target market for this book, being a straight female. But I remember the AIDS epidemic and the impact it made on all who witnessed it, so I couldn't help but cry at certain points of the story. I felt the emotion, the overwhelming sense of grief, the immense sadness. A very powerful, if difficult, read.

A tender and moving account of queer love and life when those suffering with HIV and AIDS were stigmatised and rejected by society. This story relates a deeply personal reflection on how these harsh reactions affected the people who died from the illness, and their loved ones. The narrative runs away with itself - the lack of grammar and punctuation emphasises the voice of the author - the reader is drawn into his mind and thoughts, as if seeing the pages of a journal or listening to him talking. There is much sadness but also vivid descriptions of the hedonistic world of gay men in the late 80's/early 90's. Friendships run deep, even if many sexual encounters seem shallow and unemotional. There is hope for a brighter future at the end of the novel.

Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter is a raw, powerful exploration of love, loss, and grief, set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic. The story follows Johnny Grant, who reflects on his life and relationship with Jerry Field. Thirty years ago, Johnny, at 19, fell in love with 45-year-old Jerry, and together they built a life at Jerry’s Nova Scotia House. Now, Johnny is alone, grappling with the void left by Jerry’s death and the changing world they once knew.

Porter beautifully captures the deep connection between Johnny and Jerry, weaving memories of radical love, sex, and friendship. Through Johnny’s journey, the book reflects on the devastating impact of the AIDS crisis on the queer community while also celebrating its creativity and resilience.

This book is intimate and visionary, offering a poignant tribute to a lost era and the enduring pain of the epidemic. Nova Scotia House is a heartbreaking yet unforgettable tale of love, loss, and the power of memories. A stunning debut from a writer with a unique and liberating voice.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

This is a beautiful book on love, loss, and grief. It takes place in a creative community devastated by the AIDS epidemic. At first I didn’t understand the writing style, the fragmentation, the coherent incoherence. I soon realised what seemed like disparate strands were not, but instead were Johnny’s stream of consciousness. From there on I devoured every word.

Johnny is 19 when he meets Jerry, an older man who is HIV positive. Their life together, their love, is beautiful, glorious, and heartbreaking. How Jerry brings a new awareness and a new way of life to Johnny is breathtaking. I cried. Nova Scotia House is a book which has lingered with me. More than anything when I finished reading it I wanted to pick up another book, one written by Jerry, to hear and feel and experience his wisdom further. Charlie Porter has created a masterpiece of words and of our culture.

My thanks to Penguin Press, NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

It took me a while to get used to the writing style of this book but it is in fact very apt for a reflective book of this nature. AIDs in the 80s was the same as Covid in that they were both new virus’. Both virus’ caused global fear and when it was discovered that AIDs was being passed around the gay community, they not only suffered from the virus but from the way they were treated by society. A very sad time. The book reflects on this as well as on better times. There is grief and sadness but also hope. Thank you Netgalley for an advance copy of this book.

Charlie Porter’s first foray into fiction, NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE, is a beautiful exploration of love, and grief. It centres around Johnny, as he remembers his partner Jerry and their relationship before Jerry’s death at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Twenty-four years after Jerry’s death (and approaching the age Jerry was when they met), Johnny still lives in the flat they shared at Nova Scotia House, watching the world change around him.

Written as an inner monologue, Johnny’s focus moves between his current moments and his memories of thirty years before, when he was 19 and learning how to be a person in a world full of judgement. I loved the tenderness of many of Johnny’s memories of Jerry; especially of things like being taught to make bread, keeping Jerry’s original mother alive and trusting his neighbour to feed the dough if he is away. These moments in the present time add up, as Porter cleverly uses Johnny’s attention to move through time and manages to create an ultimately hopeful narrative out of Johnny’s (and of the wider LGBTQ+ community’s) pain.

A unique love story, about life and legacies. Gorgeous.

This book broke me, put me back together, then broke me all over again. The heartbreak being told from the perspective of someone that's built their life around their partner, the way everything reminds them of the one they've lost, it's visceral and real.
The AIDS pandemic setting adds to the sorrow, the fact that this is lived history for so many of our LGBTQ+ community, but not enough. A whole generation lost. Charlie's writing evokes such strong imagery of this era, and reminds us how far we've come but how far we have yet to go.

DNF I thought I was going to like this book from the description but unfortunately I just couldn’t get in to it. It had very child like writing which was really starting to annoy me so simple stopped reading

Nova Scotia House is told in the unique interior voice of Johnny Grant, who as a 19-year-old in the 1980s met and fell in love with Jerry Field, a 45-year-old who was HIV positive at a time when that meant a guaranteed and imminent death sentence. It’s narrated from some 30 years hence, as Johnny struggles to negotiate the modern world without Jerry (now long dead) and without much of the exuberance and idealism that characterised their time together.

The novel jumps around in time, between the gentrified tower blocks and soulless hookups of Johnny’s modern London and back to various points in his life with Jerry (and soon after his death) in the 80s and 90s. We learn about Jerry’s international playboy lifestyle, his experiments in communal living, and his eventual settling down alongside Johnny, with art, gardening and cooking providing a different pace of living as he encourages Johnny’s own youthful experimentation while he himself contemplates a tragic early demise. While much of the novel is very much an intimate affair, chronicling both the joy and the sadness of the central pair’s doomed relationship, it also very much opens up outwards to shine a light on the wider tragedy of AIDS. Memorable sections include Johnny’s passionate on-stage protest at a medical company that rather than making its lifesaving drugs accessible seems instead focusing on sowing hatred; and a later post-Jerry section in which he visits the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, with the (presumably real-life) visual examples that Porter unexpectedly deploys truly heartbreaking to see.

It’s a book that’s told in a unique voice, imitative of Johnny’s interior monologue in a way that involves a lot of repetition and little punctuation. While initially a little tough to orient oneself around as a reader, it quickly settled into place for me and represented a pacey, brutally honest mode of storytelling, reminding me a little of James Kelman or something along those lines. The more you understand Johnny and his life experience, the more the mixture of anxiety-ridden hesitancy punctuated by poetic bursts of passion that the language conveys begins to make sense.

It’s a book that creeps up on you somewhat. It begins in a whirl of energy, with vibrant descriptions of clubbing, hooking up and some graphic sex. But its emotional core takes a little longer to develop, as Johnny explores his past, both as a form of belated grief for his lost love and seemingly as a way of pulling together ideas and lessons that Jerry taught him, and using them to begin to shape a new, potentially more hope-filled life.

Along the way it doesn’t shy away from the depths of pain endured by Jerry and the loss felt by Johnny, and is certainly not an easy read as a result. But it’s also one that scatters through notes of celebration of life, highlights the simple and hard to explain small joys that keep people going through extremes of suffering, and ends on a note of relative optimism, in spite of everything.

A really strong debut which tackles familiar and tragic themes in a fresh voice. (8/10)

Thank you to Charlie Porter, Penguin Books, and NetGallery for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Overview:
Johnny Grant faces stark life decisions. Seeking answers, he looks back to his relationship with Jerry Field. When they met, nearly thirty years ago, Johnny was 19, Jerry was 45. They fell in love and made a life on their own terms in Jerry’s flat: 1, Nova Scotia House. Johnny is still there today – but Jerry is gone, and so is the world they knew.

As Johnny’s mind travels between then and now, he begins to remember stories of Jerry’s youth: of experiments in living; of radical philosophies; of the many possibilities of love, sex and friendship before the AIDS crisis devastated the queer community. Slowly, he realizes what he must do next—and attempts to restore ways of being that could be lost forever.

Review:
Unfortunately the writing style was too jarring and I had to dnf. I do understand this is a matter of preference and I can see a lot of potential in the writing. The premise was interesting and I’m disappointed I didn’t enjoy it more.

God this was so devastatingly beautiful. It took a few chapters to get into the swing of the narrative, but I loved the unique writing style of this debut, and it's a style that would make the narration of an audiobook even more poignant. This had me an emotional wreck, and I regret absolutely none it. Wasn't something I could read in one, two, or even half a dozen sittings, I found myself taking breaks for days at a time so I could process what I was reading and feeling, and I think the writing style works well in that sense - this wasn't a book where I could skim over paragraphs. It made me take in each and think about every word of Johnny's reflections and the depth of Porter's writing. This one will strike an emotional chord with many and will be very difficult to forget about.

Couldn't be more thankful to NetGalley and Penguin Press Uk for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an unbias review

*Review posted on StoryGraph; Amazon review to follow on Pub date

Oh my goodness. What a roller coaster read; this pulled at my heart strings and snapped a couple along the way. I wept more than once at the overwhelming sadness as Johnny reflects upon his life without Jerry. Set at the height of the AIDS tragedy, Jerry is much older and dying. Nova Scotia House was their home together, living a lifestyle they chose and Johnny reflects upon their time together.

It’s a while since I read a stream of consciousness novel. Bolaño used this narrative style in one of his shorter novels and it worked very well. I found it easy to absorb the words without the usual grammatical conventions and it really added to the flow as Johnny’s grief and outpourings are documented. But this isn’t in any way downbeat. It’s a homage to love, commitment, friendship and more. It’s takes powerful writing to hit the emotions hard and Charlie Porter has done so in spades. I rarely return to titles, but feel there’s so much more in this story that I may have missed on a single read, I’ll be going back to it. It’s haunting and I hope it’s selected for awards. Just brilliant.

Told through a stream of consciousness narrator,Johnny, who looks back at a doomed relationship with an older man at the later stages of HIV. They have shared the heartbreak of love which cannot have a future, but they have a connection which endures. This is a love story, albeit unfulfilled, as Johnny looks for physical connections elsewhere, and lives a life which can feel uncomfortably raw and meaningless. The gay sex scenes are explicit and numerous, and not for the faint hearted, but ultimately show us the difference between these animal urges and an enduring emotional attachment. The language can be stilted and monotonous, but it shows the confusion and desperation felt by Johnny, at the end of the day who is just a young gay man in a world being ripped apart by prejudice and disease. He is supported by friends, and they have to be his salvation.

This book made me sob and it made me think, and yet it has a wonderful lightness to it, thanks to the free-flowing prose. It's essentially a love letter, and you just can't help but fall in love with Jerry as well. My favourite parts are all the conversations between Jerry and his friends and his lover, Johnny. Jerry seems to be speaking directly to us, and urgently, with Johnny as his messenger.
More fiction from Charlie Porter, please!