Hugo Hunter wasn’t just the most celebrated gay novelist of the twentieth century; he was one of the period’s most celebrated novelists. Having written two novels that stirred the literary world and changed readers’ lives, he’s been comfortably living off the income and fame of his work for years without having to write another word. That is, until he’s offered $ 2 million to write another. The only trouble is, Hugo has never written a novel before.

‘Objects of Desire’ (2025) by Neil Blackmore is set in the New York of 1984, just as the AIDS crisis begins to sweep through the gay community. Through Hugo’s first-person narrative, we’re taken back to the Wales of the war years, to London in the late 40s and the Los Angeles of the late 1960s to understand where Hugo came from, how he came by those two novels and the people he met along the way.

I’m more familiar with London than the other locations, but for me, it was perfectly evoked as we followed Hugo through the streets of Soho, Mayfair and Bloomsbury. There’s enough detail to feel the setting built around you, but not so much that it becomes tedious.

I’d first found Blackmore via his novel ‘The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle’ (2020) where I, by chance, read the jacket blurb about two brothers doing the grand tour of Europe in 1763, and was instantly intrigued.  He has a talent for writing anti-heroes, these socio/psychopaths (the difference between which is explored in ‘Objects’) that connect with the reader. You might not like them, and you certainly despise what they do, but they absolutely charm you and make you understand the hows and whys. The question of what makes a person good or bad is also explored and gives the reader enough to consider without feeling lectured to.

Blackmore is the king of queer historical fiction and one of the great joys of this book is in how Blackmore places his fictitious character firmly in the company of literary giants such as Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin and Christopher Isherwood (some of the titular objects). He doesn’t just see them or bump into them; he’s friends with some and fierce frenemies with others. The conversations between Hugo and his real-life contemporaries feel genuine, authentic and dangerously audacious.

Having sped through this page-turner, I’m now looking forward to getting started on Blackmore’s ‘The Dangerous Kingdom of Love’ (2021), a tale set in the time of King James I.