Nova Scotia House, Charlie Porter’s first novel, is at once a political manifesto, a portal into the (not so distant) past, and the profoundly moving portrait of a relationship, and its aftermath.
In short—Johnny is 19 when he meets Jerry, 45. He soon moves into Jerry’s flat, 1 Nova Scotia House. “He said he would understand if it was too much for me, that I could leave him, that I was young, I should be living, I said to him, I am living.”
Johnny stays, after Jerry’s AIDS-related death, at the same address. The flat becomes both a sanctuary and a contested site, as it’s scheduled for redevelopment, saturated with absence. That absence also contours the prose which proceeds, stark and insolent, at a propulsive pace.
We discuss the novel’s themes in our conversation below, the most prominent of which is “queer magic”—something always relevant, and radical.
—Dante Silva
Dante Silva: This is your first work of fiction, following two nonfiction titles (What Artists Wear and Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Business of Fashion). What are you able to work through, and towards, in fiction? What does the form allow for that nonfiction doesn’t?
Charlie Porter: It’s both subject and structure. My nonfiction is based in primary research. I need to see the letter, the document, the news story, the diary entry, whatever it is that is the source of a story. If I can’t find a source for a story that’s assumed to be true, I question it. That’s how the books are built.
We all know that only a thin surface of our life is recorded, noted down, observed or detailed. There’s so much for which there is no source material. This is where fiction comes in: the ability to write about all else for which there is no primary source material. In the case of queer lives, this is even more the case, since, historically, media reports have been told with a layer of homophobia. Those living closeted lives could likely not record their truths. With the AIDS crisis, so many died, their testimony lost. I have to turn to fiction to try and get close to their stories.
Structurally, my non-fiction is written on a laptop, the sentences short, like building blocks. I write fiction longhand, in capital letters. This is because my handwriting is bad, but also to give me time to breathe as I write. It means that, as I write out a word, I can be considering the next move, and the move after, allowing sentences to extend on and on, should I so wish, in the way our words extend on in the sentences we speak.
Dante Silva: What relationships, real or otherwise, influenced the relationships here (between people, places, practices)?
Charlie Porter: Nova Scotia House is set in a parallel universe, one that’s very close to being recognizable as London. It means that much feels familiar, but isn’t necessarily named, or is a version of something. This is to invite the reader to be active in the text: to me, naming a well-known club would then maybe make a reader passive, since they’d already bring to the text their own idea of the place. If it’s unnamed, they are invited to keep on their toes.
Permission for the central relationship in the novel is given by that of Derek Jarman and Keith Collins. There was a similar age difference between them, with the couple meeting after Jarman received his HIV+ diagnosis. Collins said in interviews that they never had sex; their deep queer love was built on other bonds. I took inspiration from their way of being, and also from the age gap, so that I could have Jerry tell Johnny all he could about queer experimental living in the 60s and 70s. But it is very much not a book about Jarman himself; I wanted to write about those outside of the public eye—I did not want to write about fame.
There are many nods to something real throughout the book, like the cover image, of Judy Blame and John Moore, mudlarking on the foreshore of the Thames in 1983. The image was taken by artist Nicola Tyson, and expresses queer counterculture that finds its way on the edges.
Dante Silva: I wouldn’t call the novel a “romance,” at least in the commercial sense, though there was something romantic about two people coming together, and having their worlds change. It makes the loss (of life, and also approaches to life) all the more charged. How did you conceptualize that kind of loss, as you were writing?
Charlie Porter: When I wrote the first draft of the first chapter, back in 2020, I made it clear that they would have four years together, and that Jerry would die. It was important for this to be set as a parameter of the book: it had to be clear from the beginning what we would face. I also never wanted to use HIV/AIDS as a plot device, to never have any cliffhanger moments of infection or diagnosis, no “will he, won’t he.” To me, such plot devices are exploitative of character. I wanted to write a book about those living with or affected by HIV that gave the characters dignity and, as much as a writer can, agency. It means that illness, despair, death and grief are expressed as clearly as love, sex, pleasure and friendship.
Dante Silva: I’m curious about the “queer magic” you describe, something that looks backwards and forwards at once. What is queer magic? How does it “break time”?
Charlie Porter: This is another invitation to readers: to consider queer history not just in terms of legislation, rights, crisis or victory, but in terms of lived philosophy, sensibility, shared knowledge, instinct, enlightened thinking. It’s something I plan to explore further in books to come.