Book review: Impressive debut explores forbidden lust and love in Victorian-era England

It opens with an explicit four-page-long description of a middle-aged man in a crush of bodies on a rush hour London tube train being sexually aroused by the presence of the man he is pressed up against. 

Tom Crewe’s impressive first novel explores unconventional sexual relationships in repressive Victorian London. Picture: Jon Tonks, London Review of Books

• The New Life
• Tom Crewe
• Penguin Random House/Vintage, €17.99