Brighton Darkness — John Roman Baker

Brighton Darkness is a collection of fourteen stories that mostly relate to that amorphous place called Brighton and Hove: a city of dreams that enfolds both young and old and that must somehow always be returned to. Two youths experience a gay desire that begins in St Ann's Well Gardens and continues in the back row of the Astoria cinema in the 1950s. An ex-hustler meets a famous male movie star, long since thought to be dead, and they become lovers. A birthday party doesn't quite turn out as planned, but has its own unexpected present of truth. A woman looks back in Regency Square, which is now almost beyond recognition to her. And there is snow in the city, in a year not specified, hiding the unseen darkness beneath. John Roman Baker is a British poet, playwright and novelist who has lived and written mainly in Paris, Amsterdam and Brighton.