2023-01-05
A young Scottish man sneaks aboard a World War II transport ship in this debut gay erotic novel.
February 1940. The son of a shipbuilder’s agent, young Oliver Turner experienced his sexual awakening at the Glasgow shipyard in the arms of the men laboring to build the RMS Queen Elizabeth. It’s only appropriate then that he should stow away on the completed ocean liner as a means of escaping his dreary existence in Glasgow for a life of high adventure. He’s caught almost immediately, but luckily the man who discovers him, Senior First Officer Robert Bell, is willing to stay silent in exchange for making Ollie his shipboard plaything—a desirable amenity on a long voyage. But Ollie soon learns that the ship’s maiden voyage will not be ferrying passengers across the Atlantic. Now that war has begun, the Queen Elizabeth has been commandeered to transport British troops to foreign battlefields, dodging U-boats and the Luftwaffe along the way. The resourceful stowaway doesn’t keep to one ship but finds himself serving across a fleet’s worth of vessels, picking up lovers along the way. Ollie quickly discovers that life aboard a ship during wartime is no picnic—even when there are plenty of willing sailors to share a bunk with. Brennan’s prose is dense and wry, filled with colorful comparisons between ship parts and sailors’ anatomies: “His success with securing the roughest of men meant he had honed a skill for knowing—to draw from his shipyard wanderings—which of the men rendered hard through the toughest of ship-building tasks would want to rivet his hole soft.” The writing may prove a bit ornate for some readers, and there is some confusion at times as to which character is being referenced in the litany of he’s and him’s. Even so, fans of gay stories at sea should enjoy this immersive and period-specific picaresque, which manages to capture its milieu in a way that feels simultaneously timeless and contemporary.
An engaging tale about a gay stowaway on British navy ships during wartime.
"Brennan's erotic debut, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, is a salacious story of a young man swept into service at sea during WWII. ... The period details and connection to historic boat sinkings are intriguing, and Brennan's idiosyncratic prose is fascinatingly textured ... The sex scenes themselves are graphic and kinky ... There's an audience for this ..." - Publishers Weekly
"... fans of gay stories at sea should enjoy this immersive and period-specific picaresque, which manages to capture its milieu in a way that feels simultaneously timeless and contemporary.
An engaging tale about a gay stowaway on British navy ships during wartime." - Kirkus Reviews
"Loose Lips leaves no stone unturned, boasting vivid and erotic prose ... The mixture of subject matter and genre stylings are truly unique. Thriller undertones swimming through this erotica novel keep readers guessing ..." - The BookLife Prize
"Set on the high seas during World War II, Loose Lips blends adventure, lurid intrigue and queer romance into an explicit slice of pulp fiction. Beyond the rough and raunchy prose is a fascinating and well-researched origin story that identifies in the homoerotic male-only milieus of wartime the emerging iconography, attitudes and values of twentieth century gay culture." - Levi Huxton, author of Lammy-nominated novel The Lodger, That Summer
