I reached for this off the TBR looking for a book set in the 20s and found that and much more. This is a book of contradictions. Sometimes funny, often cruel, loving yet lonely.
Plot in a Nutshell
Bettina and Bart grow up inseparable: wealthy, privileged, and unmistakably gay in a society that will not tolerate that truth. A ghastly experimental kiss confirms what they already know. So they do what many in their position have done: enter a lavender marriage, presenting respectability to the world while privately pursuing their own desires.
From school days through the bohemian excesses of the 1920s and into the shadow of the Second World War, their lives take in Paris, London, Hollywood and Egypt eith lovers, drink, drugs, glamour, risk.
Thoughts
Although I picked this up looking for something squarely set in the 1920s, The Inverts’ scope is much broader. We follow these characters from adolescence at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties into adulthood including The Second World War. The decade of champagne and jazz is only part of a longer story about survival, performance and compromise.
The central idea, the lavender marriage, is really interesting. The idea of building a family structure that quietly accommodates lovers, secrets and shared loyalties felt really intriguing. The inclusion of lovers within the extended household felt particularly interesting, and I found Étienne an character who deserved more time. He is class-conscious but lives and loves with this decadent couple, selfish yet also steadfast in this commitment to them. Jean, by contrast felt more two dimensional and it was harder to see if there was more to her than lazy cruelty.
Bettina and Bart are not easy protagonists. Bettina shows up as self-absorbed, hypocritical and insulated by money. She embraces freedom when it suits her but shows little appetite for responsibility. Bart is self-destructive, compulsive, frequently dishonest, often chasing sex in an almost frenetic destructive way. Both drink heavily. Both exhibit an unpleasant strain of fatphobia. On paper, neither should be especially likeable.
And yet I found myself rooting for them.
In Bart especially, beneath the bravado and appetite, I found a raw loneliness. He longs for love. He takes reckless risks that feel less like thrill-seeking and more like desperation. When he cares, he cares deeply. That sensitivity, glimpsed behind the swagger, gave him a sense of tragedy for me.
Bettina was more challenign. The whole premise is that she and Bart enter marriage as great friends, and there are flashes of that deep bond, but I didn’t feel like I saw that from Bettina. Their marriage often feels less like partnership and more like house sharing – a sort of proximity, easily disturbed by others. There is poignancy in the sharp cruelty they sometimes inflict on one another, but I would have liked to see more.
Finally, I struggled with the 1990s mystery frame. It added little beyond a mild sense of inevitability, and I would happily have done without it.
Where the novel is strongest is in its sense of opportunity and risk. The 1920s as seen here are fast, bohemian, intoxicating. Artists and outsiders circulate; boundaries blur; pleasure is both liberation and escape. There’s a sharp awareness of how much freedom is real and how much is provisional. Even in supposed openness, the need to hide persists. The sadness of not being fully known, or not being able to live openly even when surrounded by apparent permissiveness is always there.
The sexual content deserves mention. It is marketed as “filthy”, and the language is certainly explicit. I am not squeamish, but I did find the near-obsessive focus on bodies and genitals, coupled with what is often loveless or transactional sex, more melancholy than titillating. Throughout there is a lack of intimacy and I am sure some queer readers might accuse this of playing to an outdated stereotype.
At times the novel feels as though it is trying to say too much: queer love and secrecy, certainly, but there are also strong themes about class, war, celebrity and fame.
An uneven but absorbing novel of contradictions.