This was a beautiful book of love, loss and grief in a society devastated by the AIDS epidemic

I didn’t like the writing style at first but I enjoyed it after reading further into the novel . So emotional and powerful, devastating and heartbreaking - actually loved it

Charlie Porter - amazing novel - thank you

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Press

So - this is a book I have had on my TBR pile and it was after I read a favourable review that I promoted it. Porter is dealing with a very sensitive, emotive topic in 'Nova Scotia House' which largely focuses on Jonathan and his relationship with Jerry, his partner, who is much older than him. Clearly, Jerry is dying from an AIDS-related illness and Jonathan is dealing with trauma through the first-person narrative of the book.

It is, obviously, a very sad thing for Jonathan to be managing, and given the epidemic of the 1980s (this is largely set in the early 1990s), he is surrounded by the deaths of loved ones, and Jerry is at the core of this. The book reads like a stream of consciousness - and even though I get this is probably a representation of his state of mind, for me this style of writing jars. To add to this, I find the repetition irritating - yes, okay, perhaps it is how Jonathan would have been feeling, therefore accurately conveying his thoughts, but for a reader it leaves one feeling discombobulated.

There is a large sense of things being anonymous in the book, such as the city where Nova Scotia House is located (possibly London?), and the area Jonathan moves to with Gareth and Megan, and perhaps this is a deliberate choice of the writer. I do like the way the novel's denouement hints at more to come for Jonathan - he certainly deserves good things.

I am not sure how to respond more positively to this book. I can appreciate the way the writer is depicting such an awful event in our history - and how this affects one person in particular - but it leaves me cold in other ways.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Nova Scotia House is a poignant tribute to queer love and loss.

Charlie Porter's debut novel, Nova Scotia House, is a deeply moving exploration of love, grief, and the resilience of queer life during and after the AIDS crisis. Set in London, the story follows Johnny Grant, a 19-year-old who falls in love with Jerry Field, a 45-year-old HIV-positive man. Their relationship unfolds against the backdrop of the 1990s AIDS epidemic, a time when the virus was still untreatable. Jerry's death in 1995 leaves Johnny to navigate a world forever changed by loss.​

The titular Nova Scotia House is not just a setting but a character in itself. Inspired by Modernist architects like Berthold Lubetkin and Horace Gifford, the building reflects a philosophy of exceptional social housing and queer-specific spaces. Porter imagines it as a sanctuary where Johnny and Jerry build their life together, a place that becomes increasingly threatened by the encroaching forces of gentrification and societal change. ​

Porter's prose is characterized by its stream-of-consciousness style, employing a relentless use of commas and a staccato rhythm that mirrors the emotional intensity of the era. This narrative technique immerses readers in Johnny's experiences, capturing the urgency and rawness of his memories. The novel delves into themes of grief, memory, and the longing for a lost community, offering a poignant reflection on the impact of the AIDS crisis on queer lives. ​

If you're interested in a literary work that delves into the intricacies of queer love, loss, and the resilience of community, Nova Scotia House offers a compelling and thought-provoking experience.

I really thought I would love this book but after several attempts, it’s just not for me. The content probably is, but unfortunately I can’t get on with the stream-of-consciousness narrative. I found it difficult and distracting. I would like it known my rating reflects only my thoughts on the style of this novel and not its content.

With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

The timeline of this hugely compassionate novel veers between the present day and some point in the early or mid '90s as far as I could tell, and in doing so it charts a potted history of gay life in London during that time. It gives a snapshot of the ostracism of the 1980s, especially after HIV/AIDS erupted on the scene; of marginalised gay communities on the fringes and under the radar of society, living in abandoned warehouses in what is now the luxury of London's Docklands and caring about each other because nobody else did.

The protagonists are Johnny and Jerry, who meet each other when the much older Jerry is already HIV positive. Johnny is only 19, Jerry is in his 40s, but theirs is true love. Johnny moves into Jerry's run down council flat and is tutored by Jerry in living independently, sustainably, kindly. Jerry is a forerunner of today's environmentally conscious philosophy and he puts it into practice wholeheartedly, growing vegetables in his garden, reusing whatever he can. After Jerry dies (a truly harrowing description of dying of AIDS a few months before antiretrovirals became available), Johnny carries on living according to his philosophy, until the present day when creeping gentrification means the old council block is being surrounded by luxury developments, the light will be blocked from Jerry's garden, and Johnny must finally find his own feet.

What struck me most about this book was the kindness that suffuses it. There is no rose-tinted romanticisation of the hedonistic, promiscuous queer lifestyle, but the sense of community, acceptance, support is huge. And the fun - even in spite of the fear of infection, the fun goes on. Perhaps with more of an edge. This is true communal spirit, with no pretence, no hidden agendas - a hippy philosophy and way of life in the best sense. Recommended.

Tender, emotional and utterly gorgeous - this book was beautifully written and filled with so much heart and tragedy. Love shone through each page, through the characters' found family and relationships, like a beacon of hope amidst all of the devastation of the AIDS crisis and the lives that were changed irrevocably because of the impact of this disease.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

This was just beautiful. So well written, but in a completely edgy, different way, that was hard to grasp at the beginning but made it more poetic as you continued through. Breathtaking.

Thanks to Charlie Porter and NetGalley for this review copy!!

Absolutely beautiful. This book was so gorgeously tender, honest and absolutely heartbreaking all at once. I love books that use stream of consciousness style writing to show traumatic experiences and the dissonance of experiencing things differently afterwards. It reminded me a lot of Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson, though Porter definitely takes his narrative and places it in a part of history that is still so often underrepresented.

The stream-of-consciousness narration has a hypnotic flow that blurs the present into memory. It suits the book, and is undoubtedly well-written, but I did find it hard to read (there was a soporific quality to the unceasing rhythm). The characterisation is rich and layered, and the memory sequences were evocative and emotional... but I did find they rather overrode the present-day narrative.

Overall, there was a lot to like, but I found the style hard to engage with.

I found the writing style quite difficult, and the content was not really my thing. I persevered and while I couldn't warm to the characters, I could feel the loneliness and devastation they felt.

I really loved this memorable book that left me in little pieces blubbing on occasion. It’s the story of Johnny and the love of his life Jerry who he meets when he is very young. At the time Johnny and Jerry meet Johnny is 19 and Jerry much older at 45. Johnny is just starting out on his life and coming to terms with his gayness and his immediately drawn to the security of life with Jerry who lives in the ground floor flat in Nova Scotia house in a council estate in London where he tends his garden and his wide range of close friendships.
We meet Johnny again when he is in his 40s and he tells us of the story how he lost Jerry the love of his life so seen after meeting him
The scenes where Jerry was dying of HIV were heartbreaking.
This is a book with a no holds barred approach to living and dying which was very much present in this novel. The sex scenes for example left nothing to the imagination but were often tender and beautiful.
I love the idea of “queer magic” which was the way the older main character Jerry described the way him and his contemporaries live their lives with joy and positivity

The author has a very distinctive writing style snappy easy to read stream of consciousness like
The characters are described perfectly and really feel three dimensional and whole
This is a very memorable book that it will stay with me for a long time.

I read an early copy of the novel on NetGalley UK in return for an unbiased review. The book was published in the UK on the 20th of March 2025 by penguin press UK.
This review will appear on Meg UK, StoryGraph, Goodreads and my book blog bionicsarahbooks.wordpress.com

After the publication will also appear on Amazon UK

The way Porter explores grief was so raw and (of course) personal.
However, the contrast between these moments and the historical of the queer movement felt so drastic for my brain.
These comments are important to be mentioned, especially in queer fiction books. Here they were kind of formal and "emotion-less" compared to the rest of the story.
With that being said, I can't take away that the love story is well told.


thank you net galley for the copy

Unfortunately I DNF this book at 29%, the style of writing with the long run on sentences and stream of consciousness made it hard for me to get into and I still felt like I didn’t really understand the character by this point or feel like I was interested enough to find it what happened other than what had already been briefly mentioned.

I was expecting more with this one and was let down. Whilst it was interesting, I felt myself just waiting for the end.

I was sent a copy of Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter to read and review by NetGalley. I’m afraid I really couldn’t get on with this novel at all and didn’t finish it. I didn’t like the writing, it being a rather frantic stream of consciousness, although I did try and persevere for as long as I could. The thing that finished it for me was one too many explicit sex scenes, whether that makes me a prude or not, I just felt that I couldn’t cope with it however much it was ‘groundbreaking’ or ‘genius’. Life is too short to read books that you are not enjoying. Good luck to the author, I’m sure he will go far considering the amount of praise bestowed on this book already, it just wasn’t for me.

This is a beautifully written, unflinching examination of love, loss and coming home.

This novel is written in a stream of consciousness style, which I don't normally get on with, but the poetic prose is vivid and powerful and I was immediately drawn in and swept away by it's raw beauty.

This is an incredibly moving story about grief and what it means to be loved. It's honest approach is refreshing and touching. The descriptions of place and architecture mirror the protagonist's interior life beautifully as he experiences the desolation of grief and loneliness towards healing and becoming seen again.

This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

Nova Scotia House, follows Johnny's life as a young man during the 90's at the end of his partner Jerry's life, and also his life in the present day as he reaches the age that Jerry was when he passed. In many ways I found this a difficult book , an almost rare dnf for me.I did carry on as knowing a little about the AIDS crisis and how abysmally the queer community was treated; it's a story that needs told frequently. The writing style was both difficult to follow whilst feeling deeply personal. It felt like Johnny/the author was simply emptying the thoughts in their head on the page. I always struggle to deal with relationships where one partner is significantly older than the other, particularly when the younger party is a teen, as it feels like the older partner is exploiting the younger. This was emphasised by fact Johnny was clearly still struggling decades later. There was also a particularly graphic sex scene that did almost make me give up about the 60% mark. I did find myself reading more just to try and get out of Johnny and Jerry's world quicker. Having said that there is a slight glimmer of hope at the end of the book so I'm glad I stuck with it.

How often do you encounter a book which you think is really terrific but which you would be very careful who you would recommend it to? For me, this happens hardly ever and I wonder if I’m feeling more aware as I had a query last week about a crime novel I reviewed asking if it had any sexually explicit or graphic scenes because the lady’s 15 year old son wanted to read it, and to be honest, I couldn’t remember as I tend to take such scenes in my stride, they don’t usually flag up for me. Here, in this unflinching debut novel they do, as do scenes of grief and loss so raw that I would be nervous to foist it upon someone who might find things too triggering.

But I think this is an amazing book, an important book, even though there are aspects I would not normally champion. First and foremostly, is the writing style, perhaps best termed as stream of consciousness. It is largely a memoir from Johnny who lost his partner Jerry to AIDS in 1995. They had met when Johnny was 19 and Jerry was HIV+ and in his mid-forties. Twenty-four years later and Johnny is still in the same flat they lived in together, still grieving, still unable to move on until the proposed building of a tower block will cut out the light to Jerry’s garden which Johnny has tended all these years.

The style veers from present tense to recollections of his time with Jerry and if I say it features numerous examples along the lines of I’m going, I don’t want to go, I’m not going, I’m going, you’ll see what I mean about the stream of consciousness style which generally speaking I don’t like and here it took me a while to get into it through an early section where Johnny walks to a place he used to visit with Jerry, but do you know, here it really works and I think it is because the level of observation is extraordinary and everything feels immediate and a certain observation can trigger a recollection which is not separated, it just tends to flow into the narrative.

This reflects a time when death in the gay community was ever-present and it is recreated here chillingly yet superbly. The locations are vague, the music is specific and it is probably that which puts me right there. Jerry represents a lost generation, those that came after and many of those who survived emerged differently. LGBTQ+ life has been far more assimilated into mainstream society, this is not what Jerry and his friends wanted. It is a pin-point accurate depiction of this particular time, just before medication gave people a chance to live with AIDS and when people had been dying horrifically and tragically for years.

The Johnny of now looks back at his younger self, his love for and learning from Jerry, on how Jerry would not recognise what has happened since and his desire to live as he believes Jerry would have wanted him to. This is raw, unflinching stuff – the grief, the love, the sex, everything feels exposed and honest and that is why this book is pretty extraordinary. I’ve either now put you off it or given you a real desire to read it, I understand if it’s the former, but hope it’s the latter .

Charlie Porter has had non-fiction work published but this is a debut novel and now it is all four of my five star novelists this year who have seen 2025 debuts. He is joining Karissa Chen, Garrett Carr and Rupert Dastur in my Superstar Debutants list- all four so very different novels. Exciting times.

Nova Scotia House is published on 20th March by Particular Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

When I started reading Nova Scotia House I was worried it wouldn't be for me. I was judging this purely on the writing style which is like a stream of consciousness, but thank goodness I didn't abandon it in favour of something 'easier' because I would have missed out on something special.

The story is told by forty-eight year old Johnny who is in mourning for his partner Jerry, a man who he lost almost three decades ago to an AIDS-related illness just a year before antiretroviral medicines became widely available. The book reads like Johnny is talking to us about their relationship, reminiscing about their time together at 1, Nova Scotia House, whilst trying to navigate his life without Jerry so many years later. He stumbles over his words and repeats himself, which lends the work a dose of realism as his language becomes less fluid as his emotions are heightened. The story also moves between time frames without ever becoming confusing. Charlie Porter really has a wonderful way of writing.

Johnny is desperate for Jerry not to be forgotten, and to make sure that his life means something. He is battling with insecurity and survivor's guilt, afraid that the choices he makes will never be enough to do the legacy of Jerry proud. We witness him trying to arrive at a place of acceptance, both for the loss of Jerry and for the person he has become without him.

There is much here for readers to relate to, and it covers a hugely important time in modern history. It is an evocative and intelligently written book, telling a story of just one couple during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but which sadly reflects what many people of the time will have gone through. Read it for the history and the social commentary, but most of all, read it for those who were lost so that we can remember them.

I struggled with this a bit because it is a meandering stream of consciousness as Johnny reflects on his life with Jerry, who has passed away due to AIDS. Despite the title, the story isn’t about a the house, but about the people, love, and memories that once filled it.

It’s a story about resilience as much as it is about loss. It also highlights the different ways people impact each other. Johnny’s memories and reflections are kind of like an old beloved photo that you keep going back to and looking at.