The Betrayal of Thomas True, by AJ West - Paige
Picture this: you’ve been born into Georgian London. The streets stink, the food stinks, the people stink. Everywhere you go is a stinky, dingy, sooty, disgusting mess. One night, you wander down an alleyway - you took the wrong turning in an ivy-covered pub wall. Down the way, you hear music thumping, voices shouting, and you feel pure energy envelop you.
You’ve found a molly house. And if you just to happen to be gay, then you’ve also found your family.
This is a terrible rendition of how author, AJ West introduced the world of Thomas True when he came to give a talk at Westbourne Bookshop in early August. It’s taken until now to process the wonderment and sadness and ache and fight that surged through me when I thought a little deeper about Thomas’s life, and his love story with Gabriel Griffin.
The Betrayal of Thomas True does more than tell queer history - it is a love letter to our ancestors who went through so much pain to live authentically in a time when there was no argument to be had. If you were gay, you’d hang.
But in between all of this history and darkness is an atmospheric thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat: there’s a rat in the molly houses who is selling mollies’ identities to the fanatics, and those mollies are getting lynched. Fast. Somehow it’s our loveable bear, Gabriel Griffin who has to figure out who it is - and he hopes it isn’t the new molly in London, Thomas.
We’re grounded through this dark story with cutting humour from the narrative voice - humour from a contemporary point of view - sneering and mocking. When these righteous men of God belittle gay men, our narrator reminds us who they are: complete fools. This humour, for me, is what made this book so readable; it balanced the grief I felt, and brought levity to an otherwise-tragic story.
The Betrayal of Thomas True is a marvel. Think Sarah Waters, but less smutty and more tender in its portrayal of romance. It is easily one of the best books I’ve read over the past year, and one I’ll be thinking about forever. AJ West has done a wonderful thing for the queer community in writing this book, and for society at large - that we can leave those mistakes in the past, and be better people than we once were.
Paige
