A Room Above a Shop by Anthony Shapland

Pre-Order  Publishes 13th March 2025 
Observer Finest Debut Novels 2025
 
When two quiet men form a tentative connection neither knows where it might lead. M has inherited his family's ironmongery business and B is younger by eleven years and can see no future in the place where he has grown up, but when M offers him a job and lodgings, he accepts. As the two men work side by side in the shop, they also begin a life together in their one shared room above - the kind of life they never imagined possible and that risks everything if their public performance were to slip.

Unfolding in South Wales against the backdrop of Section 28, the age of consent debate and the HIV and AIDS crisis, this is a tender and resonant love story, and a powerful debut.
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'An atmospheric portrayal of gay, working-class life in a South Wales Valley, to read A Room Above a Shop is to feel held within the hands of a master craftsman in control of his form. I dare anyone to read this and not feel the ache of M and B's story, their solitude and their desire' - Joshua Jones, author of Local Fires