But you never look at me as I tug down your pyjama bottoms…and the sheet becomes damp, your eyes squeeze shut, and your drooping face droops even more…I am not distressed…I am comforted by all this, Patrick…” “I will not avert my eyes at the necessary moment, or at any moment, I will not look away. I’m not sure how aware she is of this, but she has an underlying layer of soft cruelty when dealing with Patrick, like refusing to hire a weekend carer so she can give Patrick his bedbath, knowing how undignified it must make him feel. She’s writing this ‘confession journal’ and talking about how she cares for Patrick, but everything she says about him is so passive-aggressive. My dislike for Marion began almost right away when we first meet her. Rochester (the misogynistic maniac who locked his wife in an attic) from Jane Ayre, but hats off to Marion, because she’s knocked both of those characters off the top spot. I used to reserve this covered spot for Briony (the lying and manipulative narrator) from Atonement or Mr. Marion is the worst character to have ever existed in a novel. The two men lose contact and things finally come to a head when Marion brings an ailing Patrick to live with them and writes her version of events (the actual book we’re reading), a confession of sorts to the men of her part in the direction their lives took. Things plod on for a bit until Marion finally realizes what’s going on and has Patrick arrested for indecency (basically being gay) and ruins Tom’s career as a policeman in the process. Patrick agrees to share Tom with Marion, although Marion seems clueless about this whole thing, and Tom marries Marion with Patrick as his best man. At the same time, Tom meets Patrick, a slightly older museum curator, and they begin a romantic relationship. Eventually, once he’s back from the military where he served as a cook and has joined the police force, she manages to spend time with him as he teaches her to swim and they start a friendship. What annoyed me so much? It’s a bit of a long story really.įor those who don’t know, the book is set in 1950s Brighton, where Marion Taylor, the book’s protagonist and main narrator, meets and falls in love with Tom Burgess, her best friend Sylvie’s brother. I was so annoyed, angered, enraged, and every other negative feeling in between when reading this book that the pages just flew by, my temper flaring as I went. And I started it I just couldn’t put it down, but not for the reasons that you might think. So me being the impulsive sausage that I am, I ordered the book immediately and anxiously awaited its arrival. The release of the movie starring half of our favourite couple is looming ever closer and it was only fitting that I devoted some article space to this novel. My review list for the Queer Book Nook is rather long but I was always going to get to My Policeman at some point.

My policeman book reviews