Hello Darling, Are You Working?
by Rupert Everett
I bought this 1992 ARC at a used bookstore, probably for $0.99 in June 2015 if the sticker is anything to go by. That seems right. I finally picked it up off my shelf yesterday because it's toooo hoooot outside and I wanted to read something silly and low stakes.
It is silly, so that was a success, but there's serious emotional stakes too. I was tempted to tag it "historical" because it's so firmly situated in 1987. A year before I was born, so I don't know, maybe he got it all wrong, but it felt real to me. Depicts a midcentury gay identity that's all tangled up with transfemininity, and coming into the anxious hangover of AIDS and 1980s work and money culture. It resonated with the "dethroning the queen" chapter of A Short History of Trans Misogyny, which I've been too hot and tired to finish.
It's a satire, it's a bit free with various prejudices, but it does manage to get most of the ridicule focused on upper class Brits (and whatever a Hooray is?), with a sideline in wealthy Americans. Even so, I was somehow rooting for every character. It reminded me of Flashman in the satire and the extreme Britishness of it all, but I could barely read Flashman because he was too horrible to root for. I don't know how you tweak the recipe to come up with one or the other. Something about Rhys and co being incompetent in ways that hurt both themselves and others, but also frequently generous to each other for no reason? (It would probably help if I had read Flashman less than 20 years ago.)
The ink drawings are cute and add to the story. Rhys really is a grown up Eloise, who's discovered sex and drugs and that somebody eventually has to pay for the room service.
The end is
I was going to say 3/5 but I think I've talked myself into 4/5. It doesn't look like Everett ever wrote another of these, which is a bummer! Wonder if there's fanfic.