3 Obscure Novels About Male Relationships

I don't think that male friendships, male relationships and men's mental health is something that is explored enough in the more obscure modern novels of the 20th and 21st century. We have the obvious books we can name such as "Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice which explores not only the suicidal depression of the main character but also the homosexual relationship he has with Lestat (it is also one of my top five favourite novels of all time, so there you go). And we also know of the novel "Brideshead Revisited" in which Charles Ryder is bewitched by the mysterious but juvenile and self-destructive Sebastian Flyte. We have seen how Christopher Isherwood writes his life lessons of father-son type relations in "The Memorial" and the brotherhood of "A Meeting by the River". We even have the introspection explored in novels like "Less Than Zero" by Bret Easton Ellis by the narrator Clayton, and Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" as autobiography, and finally Chuck Palahiuk's "Fight Club" characters of Tyler Durden. The list goes on.

But I feel like when we talk about male relationships, we normally talk about the same five or ten books. I feel like some of the best novels exploring these different and complex relations have been under-read and underrated amongst the popular reader choices. They have either never been heard of or heard of and overlooked. No, they are not Jack Kerouac, nor are they Sam Selvon, they are not the legendary James Baldwin and no, they do not include authors like Isaac Bashevis Singer. Instead, they include authors you may have heard of minutely but books you may have just forgotten about.

I ask you to give these books a try as their complexities are large and you can get very much invested in them. I am hoping that these more obscure novels about male relationships helps you to see that not all of them can be put into categories like 'gothic', 'modern' or 'postmodern'. Some just fall under 'human' and that is okay as well. These three novels are obscure but I am sure you will enjoy them and their relaying of the male condition upon different relationships.

They are in no particular order.

3 Obscure Novels About Male Relationships

Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery

Gohar, the philosophical one. Yeghen, the poetic drug-dealer. El Kordi, the revolutionary. They are suspected of being accomplices to a murder but the investigator Nour El Dine finds their humour and good spirits too captivating and so, cannot bring himself to arrest them. It is odd that these men lead a life of abject poverty with a smile on their face at all times. Yet, everyone harbours a secret - as does the investigator and maybe, just maybe, the men are aware of it. Could they ever be arrested? Is it true that they are happy like this? Is this happiness due to the rejection of the modern world and its rising consumerism? All that may be true but in this dark comedy filled with ironic twists, Cossery makes the claim that male relationships are based on everyone playing their part for the greater good. Or so it seems.

We Think the World of You by J.R Ackerley

Frank adores his friend Johnny, to the point that gives undertones of homosexuality (when I say 'undertones' it is under nothing. It is quite obvious to Frank and Johnny, but to nobody else). When Johnny goes to prison Frank gets more and more limited access to him because of Johnny's family. Not being able to see Johnny and witnessing the absolute terrible family he has, Frank makes a stand against them as he actually starts hanging out with Johnny's pet dog. Written in an almost romantic fantasy style, with dark humour and short, sharp insults - this book is quite possibly Ackerley's best attempt at showing us that men in love are at their most protective when their access to their partner is limited by such unbearable people.

Morte D'Urban by J.F Powers

I am pretty sure you have heard of J.F Powers. This novel is about the great darkly comical Father Urban. Father Urban is witnessing the growth of the Catholic Church and its members. His strange morals raise question to the point of him being banished to some far away town in Minnesota. Through this, he tries to regain himself - forgetting that the power had gone to his head to put him there. He reaches for the word of God and tries his best to bounce back. Over the course of this novel, you will explore a man's relation to the church and his colleagues of it and a man's relation to God and what he does to get back to him. Critical of the power of the church, Powers is a brilliant writer of such relationships and writes them with vigour which empowers his characters to make such drastic decisions.