Bryan Moriarty, Sounds Like Fun – review
A funny, heart-warming story about what happens when a pair of twentysomethings embark on an open relationship.
Eoin is 27 and works in a trendy coffee shop, whose owner has mysteriously disappeared, leaving him managing the place. When his boyfriend, Rich, suggests they try an open relationship, he is unsure but goes along with it in an effort to avoid losing him. After a few fumbles and missed opportunities, things take a left turn when Eoin finds a mislaid gym membership card in the coffee shop. On top of that, his friend Jax, who is hopelessly obsessed with crafts, gets involved with a guy she shouldn’t be involved with and his absent boss, Rebecca, sends him on a clandestine midnight mission that ends in a bloody nose.
Moriarty’s style is brisk and warm, which draws the reader into a familiar world of everyday dilemmas and hapless scenarios that play out with great humour. One of the instantly appealing elements is the vision of London as a site of opportunity and isolation in which we recognise our own feelings and experiences, rendered with remarkable poise and realism, where Eoin finds himself surrounded by people but lacking in human contact. When he eventually does find it, he does so in the most unlikely of places, such as an amazingly civil threesome.
A familiar listlessness weaves through the narrative, as Eoin drifts from pub to work to warehouse party without much sense of why he is doing it or where he is going to end up. A failed sexual encounter with a man who looks like Freddie Mercury, which seems innocuous enough, comes to fruition later and ties up one of these existential loose ends by providing Eoin with a previously missing piece of his cosmic jigsaw puzzle. Essentially, it is a story about finding the missing pieces even though you did not consciously know they were missing. The trick that binds it all together and that prevents it from becoming a soppy cliché is that Eoin and Rich are not egregiously unhappy – they are not even mildly discontented – they are just drifting in a comfortable bubble, and that bubble does not so much burst as it quietly dissipates without a whisper. It is, to Moriarty’s credit, not a sad novel, hardly a morose word in it, but nonetheless it taps into the insecurities gay men often navigate when manoeuvring our relationships through competing the worlds of hookup culture and monogamy.
As the drama unfolds, Eoin’s situation becomes increasingly compelling precisely because the drama is steadily played out with an even pace, even though there are moments when it seems as if it could be more surprising. But Moriarty’s gift is exactly that he resists the urge to overblow the narrative into the ridiculous; instead, the plot unfolds, as does life, with a comforting inevitability, rendering it an entirely relatable, but completely enjoyable, journey that any of us might chance upon or fantasise about. Punctuated with little incidents that elicit a cringe and a chuckle, such as when Eoin encounters on Grindr somebody he works with, Moriarty does a sterling job of keeping the story both down to earth and engaging. It is a novel about a series of epiphanies, which would otherwise have remained dormant, befall him, leading him to discover that the warmth of another man’s touch and the electricity of a genuine connection is more important that material stability.
Moriarty offers an ending that sidesteps the inevitable at the same time as giving a deep sense of satisfaction. There is a point, towards the end, where you find yourself rooting for Eoin to essentially do the wrong thing, for once he and Rich become exclusive again, an opportunity presents itself. Far from being an anti-climax, this lends the story a twist that then sets up a surprising but satisfying ending. Indeed, the slight turn it eventually takes elevates the novel from a cute coming of age type of story to a truly contemporary take on the very real dynamics of queer relationships. And it does this without coming across as preachy, political, or ideological – it is crisp, humorous and human from start to finish.
For all its breezy, light-hearted gusto, Sounds Like Fun is a novel about a young man undergoing a fairly dramatic shift of direction in his life. And that is where it sets itself apart from the crowd – its message is that happiness is often found in being brave, in departing from the comfortable and in asking difficult questions of yourself and those around you. It is refreshing to read a queer novel about people who are basically enjoying life and who come to important, and life-changing, realisations without having to endure some spectacular tragedy or suffering.
Sounds like Fun, ISBN: 9781529393507, is published by Hodder & Stoughton on 30 March 2023. Paperback, £21.99. [nb This is the price listed on the Hachette website, which seems crazy, but retailers, like Gay Pride Shop, are selling for £8 – 8.99, so support small business and buy it there)
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