LIGHTBORNE: A Novel, the best stories are in History

LIGHTBORNE: A Novel
HESSE PHILLIPS
Pegasus Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$27.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A thrilling reimagining of the last days of one of the most famed Elizabethan playwrights—Christopher Marlowe—and of a love that flourishes within the margins.

Christopher playwright, poet, lover. In the plague-stricken streets of Elizabethan England, Kit flirts with danger, leaving a trail of enemies and old flames in his wake. His plays are a roaring success; he seems destined for greatness. But in the spring of 1593, the queen's eyes are everywhere and the air is laced with paranoia.

Marlowe receives an unwelcome visit from his one-time mentor, Richard Baines, a man who knows all of Marlowe’s secrets and is hell-bent on his destruction. When Marlowe is arrested on charges of treason, heresy, and sodomy—all of which are punishable by death—he is released on bail with the help of Sir Thomas Walsingham.

Kit presumes Walsingham to be his friend; in fact, the spymaster has hired an assassin to take care of Kit, fearing that his own sins may come to light. Now, with the queen's spies and the vengeful Baines closing in on the playwright, Marlowe's last friend in the world is Ingram Frizer, a total stranger who is obsessed with Kit's plays, and who will, within ten days' time, first become Marlowe's lover—and then his killer.

Richly atmospheric, emotionally devastating, and heartrendingly imagined, Lightborne is a masterful reimagining of the last days of one of England's most famous literary figures.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I doubt too many unabashedly gay men throughout history are as well-known to modern audiences as Marlowe. He is one of the few in History whose sexuality does not get the "oh, no of course he was just as straight as string" treatment from the "eww-ick" homophobes. Goodness knows they've tried, but it never gets past the "no he isn't because I said no he isn't" level of argument.

No, he was, and he said so too loudly for History to get their anxious denials to be believed.

The delight of this novel, however, is the unnerving time it chooses to bring to life, that terrible last bit of existence after Marlowe left prison for the last time knowing he was not going to be allowed to live much longer for fear of what he knew becoming public knowledge. It was not an unreasonable fear, Marlowe was not a reticent man. It was possible to provoke him into indiscreet speech; he knew embarrassing truths; therefore....

It's never, ever been safe to know things about powerful people that can't be said in public. I suspect that Marlowe, poor lamb, besides being a startlingly bad judge of character was also just as addicted to risk as he was to tobacco. In the story we're told here, by a scholar of Marlowe, his life, and the times, Ingram Frizer is not with Marlowe by mere happenstance but in the role of minder while the decision of what to do about him and the risks he poses to the great and the good is determined. What actually occurs follows the official version established at law...but the unspoken and unspeakable parts are revealed.

I would give this wonderfully textured, nuanced work more stars were it not for something I'm sorry to say is a failing of mine in reading about my bygone ancestral queers: I want writers to choose a side, I want to know what they think, in every case but this one. I'm not saying Marlowe was straight, or gay, or any other modern label because I really believe you can't impute an identity to someone whose worldview quite simply didn't contain it. The torturer should as plausibly think of himself as a serial killer and a sadist if Marlowe was taking the identity "queer." "Sodomite" meant someone who performed acts of sodomy, not someone's fundamental identity. It's no small point to me.

The author, in the epilogue, presents really fun-to-read ideas about Marlowe from days gone by, from the "no he isn't because I said no he isn't" brigade, and from those like me who say identities aren't fungible. He's got sound reasoning for his viewpoint. If Marlowe was alive today he'd very likely be in a leather club somewhere making some platoon of horny men very happy. But he isn't.

For me that's a problem buying into this character. YMMV, and I seriously hope it will. Oh, and Frizer? A real man. I would not be one bit surprised if the role he plays in this story is not precisely the role he played in Deptford.