Shapland, Anthony - A Room Above A Shop

An Observer Best Debut 2025 from a new voice in
Welsh literature: an atmospheric and poignant story of
a relationship between two small-town Valleys men
during the late 1980s.
When two quiet men form a tentative connection neither knows where it
might lead. M has inherited his family's ironmongery business and B is
younger by eleven years and can see no future in the place where he has grown
up, but when M offers him a job and lodgings, he accepts. As the two men
work side by side in the shop, they also begin a life together in their one
shared room above - the kind of life they never imagined possible and that
risks everything if their public performance were to slip.
Unfolding in South Wales against the backdrop of Section 28, the age of consent
debate and the HIV and AIDS crisis, this is a tender and resonant love
story, and a powerful debut.