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Paul Bailey, who died in October aged 87, was celebrated for his comic brilliance, profound compassion extending to his most flawed characters, and an intelligence that avoided being sterile. His literary works often explored the influence of recollections in shaping lives, fueled by sharp, rhythmic dialogue. In addition to storytelling, he was also a memoirist, poet, and more—this is an overview to the volumes he authored.

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Books for Companionship

The author appeared as a social being, a master conversationalist fond of casual small talk, according to a fictional persona. Together with companion author Beryl Bainbridge would watch Coronation Street and analyze it telephonically. This pleasure in gossipy exchanges shines through in his novels Trespasses (1970) and Peter Smart’s Confessions (dating to 1977). Each includes a leading man surrounded by funny, annoying, over-the-top characters, frequently family members whose gravitational pull is unavoidable. “Who wants to be normal anyway?” asks the mother of Ralph in the book Trespasses after he discloses his homosexuality. Similar to spending time with your wittiest, boldest friend.

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The Ones to Make You Laugh and Cry

Bailey wrote excellently regarding elderly life, throughout his literary path. His debut novel the novel At the Jerusalem (published in 1967) follows the life of Faith Gadny during her transition to a nursing home, where fellow residents offer warmth missing from caregivers, whose concern by asking “Aren’t you watching television?”. In his penultimate novel Chapman’s Odyssey (2011), an elderly hospitalized man alternates between arguing with doctors (“I consume only fine wines”, he affirms when scolded for liver results) and confronting past remembrances of his mother, lovers, literary figures including Pip by Dickens and Emma by Austen. The two works are filled with comic interactions yet shadowed by the inevitable conclusion. Throughout his novels, smiles are deceptive. In that book, “the matron smiled, shut the smile off quickly”; Faith Gadny chuckles anxiously if her actions are questioned. Within Chapman’s Odyssey, Harry advises that “my grins are misleading”. The audience’s grins, though, are real.

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To Understand the Truth Beneath the Tales

Besides novels, Bailey was a talented life writer, publishing two autobiographies. the memoir An Immaculate Mistake (published in 1990) stands as a masterpiece of reminiscence, its name coming from his parent’s remark calling him “our error” and saying he shouldn’t exist. (“Aged, she was releasing her confidences,” he notes. “This secret, she realized, would intrigue me.”) Here we see the origins of misguided, loving, frustrating parents throughout his books. It also paints a moving picture of a homosexual young man in the 1940s–50s, when same-sex acts were criminal, and his family found it odd if a male child gifted blooms to his parent; and of an aspiring actor (The writer was on stage before writing) who learned Hamlet by age fifteen. His second memoir A Dog’s Life (published in 2004) centers on life with his mongrel puppy Circe, his ex-partner David, his affection for Romania—that influenced later novels like the novel Kitty and Virgil, Uncle Rudolf, and the book The Prince’s Boy—and heaps of rumors, featuring an anecdote regarding Iris Murdoch labeling a listener an “idiot”.

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For Those Short on Time

Paul Bailey’s books are mostly concise—the impactful Old Soldiers (from 1980) is barely 100 pages—but for something shorter, try his poetry from his later career. The pair of volumes Inheritance (2019) along with Joie de Vivre (released in 2022) display his humor, compassion, accuracy in condensed form. These writings are rich with mortality and existence. Two love themes recur: regarding his mum (“Now I’m closer—/ I have to say—/ than in life”) and for his spouse Jeremy Trevathan. Within the poem Amazement, he writes of the joy of “watching an idiotic TV entertainment” together, finishing with: “It’s remarkable, this simple act of consuming cheese and wine as darkness falls.”

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For a Single Must-Read

There is little debate that Paul Bailey’s boldest work was Gabriel’s Lament, shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1986. (He served as a judge for the award in 1982, a role he disliked.) This was the book Paul Bailey valued most, despite the fact “it exhausted him completely”. It follows the narrative of Gabriel Harvey, whose mother vanishes and a father who becomes a intolerable pretentious person upon receiving money, and the two might be related. It serves as a portrait of 20th-century London, an account of psychological collapse, and both comic and tragic as anything Bailey wrote. Additionally, it prompted a sequel, Sugar Cane (1993), which Bailey researched by visiting brothels as an observer.