July 26, 2010
Schaefer obsessively maps in his debut the overlapping disintegration of skinhead subculture and rise of gay subculture in London. Tony Crawford, a violent and secretly gay skinhead in the 1970s and '80s, appears in nonlinear fragments that intersect with those of the narrator, James, who, in 2003, is supported by his parents while he researches a screenplay about notorious homosexual skinhead Nicky Crane. By the time James begins a relationship with skinhead Adam, the skinhead style has been annexed from fascism in the name of fashion; indeed, Adam is distressed by James's excessive interest in neo-Nazis. Schaefer, meanwhile, charts Tony's odyssey through the collapse of neo-Nazi skinhead culture—his first boyfriend was a skinhead and he followed suit, starting down a path that led to prison and deterioration, surviving just long enough to become an impoverished cultural relic and an answer to the mystery James is chasing. Losing large chunks of regurgitated political history would have allowed Schaefer's complex parsing of turn of the century identity politics to shine. Schaefer is obviously a talented writer, but one who needs to be editorially reined in.