Chapter 9: One Love by Matt Cain
One weekend unravels decades of emotion in a beautiful exploration of love and friendship.
One Love is my favourite kind of contemporary novel: complex characters I can’t help but root for, an event that unravels decades of emotion, writing that challenges my worldview and a story that stays with me beyond the final chapter.
I expected to love this book because I adored The Secret Life of Albert Entwhistle. I was in no doubt that Matt Cain is a writer who so beautifully explores complex situations.
But One Love takes this up a notch.
When we spoke to Matt on Better Words, I couldn’t help asking him about Layton and Nikita’s Strictly journey. He mentioned the couple’s Blackpool dance as one of his favourites of the season because it subverts the ‘advice’ so often given to queer people in the media:
“I’ve been told this in my publishing journey: be warm and fluffy and cuddly as a gay man, don’t frighten people off, don’t bring in a sexual edge. What I liked about the dance that they did in Blackpool was that it was sexy, it was really sexy.”
It feels like Matt has nailed that edge in One Love, too. Touching on the darker, sexier, grittier and generally less traditionally palatable parts of queer life in Danny and Guy’s story.
Danny and Guy have been friends for twenty years since they met during university in Manchester. To celebrate, they head back to the city’s Pride weekend celebrations.
But for Danny, it’s a pivotal moment because he plans to finally tell Guy he’s been in love with him since they met.
The story of that weekend is interspersed with the story of their friendship over two decades. We watch them find each other and grow up together, facing heartbreak, disappointment, and success.
Male friendship feels like a rarity in the fiction I’ve read, so to see it explored like this was beautiful. I was very quickly invested in their relationship and Guy and Danny as individuals.
But I do think it’s important to stress that while this is a love story, it’s not a ‘romance’ with a ‘and they lived happily ever after’ ending (even though the conclusion is still hopeful and uplifting).
Although we see things from both perspectives, it felt like Danny was on the page a little more. He is so insecure and hard on himself – obsessing over his weight and conscious of balding. As a straight woman, there’s obviously a lot in this book that I’ve not experienced. So for me, the hardest parts to read were around Danny’s image of his body. The way he poured everything into disliking himself and endured toxic relationships because he didn’t think he was worth more felt painfully realistic.
And while Guy is described as the very image of a perfect man with straight-passing privilege, his life also hasn’t been without its heartaches. One Love really highlights that there is no singular gay or queer experience: through Danny and Guy, we see so many discourses within the community and the way queerness intersects with other things like class.
These discussions always felt like a genuine part of the narrative, rooted firmly in these complex and realistic characters (not just something to provoke discussion for the sake of it).
Alongside the grittiness that comes through in some themes, there is so much love, joy and wisdom in One Love. It’s a beautiful exploration of the messiness and humanness of love and life.
We were delighted to speak about One Love with Matt on Better Words. Listen to the interview below or find it in your favourite podcast app. Thank you to Headline for providing a copy of the book in preparation for the interview.
Layton Williams read the audiobook of Albert Entwhistle and hails from Matt’s hometown of Bury in Northern England. In this Guardian profile, he talks about how growing up in the north shaped the person he’s become.
In our interview with Matt, we discussed how it’s quite rare for straight men and women to maintain decades-long friendships if someone fancies the other and how the dynamic is stronger in a queer story. If you fancy reading a delightfully uplifting rom-com on that topic, check out Wild Things by Laura Kay
Watch Layton and Nikita’s dances from the 2023 Strictly season, starting with their sexy couple’s choice…