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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Joanna Briscoe

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave review – a will-they-won’t-they queer romance

Author Kiran Millwood Hargrave wearing a Renaissance-patterned dress against a blue background
Kiran Millwood Hargrave. Photograph: Tom de Freston

Given that novels are routinely touted as the new version of some previous chartbuster, Almost Life will doubtless be heralded as One Day meets Normal People for a sexually fluid generation. Featuring romantic indecisions spanning many years and an unironic take on the youthful psyche, it already reads as familiar.

The novel opens in Paris in 1978 with a moment of affinity on the steps of Sacré-Coeur when students Laure Boutin and Erica Parker first glimpse each other, and then teases the reader with more than 400 pages of will-they-won’t-they misunderstandings, ecstasies and sorrows. This is a tale of missed chances, of the choices we make, and of queer and bisexual love in different social climates.

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