What if the protagonist of a novel was not a single person but a couple? Damian Barr takes on this challenge, and he\u2019s found a\u00a0historic couple who make the ideal source material. Working-class Scottish artists Bobby MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun were rarely apart after they met in 1933. They lived and worked together, became famous together and then declined into desperate squalor together \u2013 even poorer than when they began.<\/p>\n
Barr knows what it\u2019s like to conquer Glasgow from a small, working-class town on its outskirts; he knows what it\u2019s like to find yourself feted for your portraits of the place you\u2019ve left irrevocably behind. His memoir, Maggie and Me<\/a>, was a hard-hitting yet rambunctious tale of growing up gay near Motherwell under Thatcher, uneasily aware that the woman who pushed his parents deeper into poverty also taught him that the ruthless exercise of his talents offered his escape. He expanded his exploration of how brutality can take hold in his novel You Will Be Safe Here<\/a>, set in South Africa. Now he returns to Scotland in this moving meditation on art, love and home.<\/p>\n In Barr\u2019s telling, the two Roberts meet on their first day at the Glasgow School of Art \u2013 scholarship boys drawn together, reluctantly on Robert\u2019s part and enthusiastically on Bobby\u2019s. They move into the attic of the wealthy socialist Mrs Cranston (\u201cPolitics is everyone\u2019s thing, whether we like it or not,\u201d she reprimands their tutor) and live on Bobby\u2019s stews and a love that moves rapidly from seeming impossible to feeling predestined, driven by Bobby\u2019s courage in seeking out other homosexual friends and allies on the fringes of Glasgow life. They\u2019re divided by war, when\u00a0Robert fights and the asthmatic Bobby doesn\u2019t, and then become celebrated figures in bohemian London, exhibiting at the Lefevre gallery and mingling in Soho with Francis Bacon and Peter Watson (Barr has\u00a0Robert driving an ambulance, just about plausibly,\u00a0with Bacon).<\/p>\n Over the years, it\u2019s common for couples to divide not just household tasks but talents and traits between them, so that each grows into their differences from the other. Barr is very astute on the ways that the two Roberts deplete as well as enhance each other. There\u2019s charm in their differences: Bobby\u2019s face is a sun, Robert\u2019s a half moon; Bobby cries easily while Robert holds his feelings in. But more disturbingly, they divide their art too, so that Bobby paints still lifes while Robert paints people, and Bobby comes to feel that he would betray his lover if he changed this. \u201cWhat started out as a joke is becoming a contract that Bobby doesn\u2019t remember signing.\u201d It\u2019s not surprising that Robert, with his more fragile ego and his more ruthless commitment to work, becomes the more successful one, and that Bobby declines as Robert flourishes, until Robert, dependent always on Bobby\u2019s resourcefulness and bonhomie, begins to decline as well. Barr\u2019s memoir all too vividly described his mother\u2019s drunken fights with her boyfriend. These memories must power the lurid incandescence of the brawls between the men as they drink away income and talent.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Inside Saturday<\/p>\n The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n It\u2019s remarkable how much I cared about the men\u2019s relationship, finding the prospect of their splitting up unthinkable<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The arc of this tale is long: the book stretches from 1933 to 1959. Barr moves from the intense, intimate storytelling of the opening chapters to a travelogue that skates across place and time, and then narrates their final years by impressively imagining the letters that Bobby sends to old acquaintances begging for cash. There are moments when all this becomes unwieldy. I\u2019d hope that a novelist with such considerable skill could do better than introducing lengthy backstory with \u201cas the strap settles, he remembers what it took to get here, to this moment\u201d. There are also sections where Robert remains shadowy compared with the livelier and more introspective Bobby \u2013 but it\u2019s true of many couples in life that one is less knowable than the other. And it was remarkable how much I did care about the men\u2019s relationship throughout, finding the prospect of their splitting up as unthinkable as they do, however unlivable their life together becomes. Barr\u2019s care for the two Roberts is palpable. The narrator is drawn into their erotic force field, almost as if there are three people in this couple (as it happens, actual threesomes are frequent occurrences).<\/p>\n \u201cNever forget where you come fae,\u201d Bobby\u2019s Aunt Maggie tells him as she sends him out to conquer the world. Barr dramatises the double-edged complexity of this. Insofar as it\u2019s Barr\u2019s own return home, this novel\u00a0is a kind of love letter to Scotland \u2013 from the Ayrshire\u00a0hills\u00a0where the men lie \u201cpainting together, curled like commas, naked in the nest they\u2019ve rolled in the high golden grass\u201d, to Glasgow\u2019s Mackintosh building, with its huge panes of glass that \u201cbounce the north light like sails catching a wind\u201d. But it\u2019s a love letter that encodes diagnosis and disaster. Both Roberts flourish in London as Scottish artists, with Scottish subjects and Scottish party pieces. Yet they\u2019re unwelcome when they make a catastrophic trip home. Barr mingles comedy and tragedy with wonderful fluidity, showing that it\u2019s their inability to forget where they\u2019re from and truly find a home elsewhere that destroys them, in the end.<\/p>\n Lara Feigel is the author of Look! We Have Come Through! \u2013 Living with DH Lawrence<\/a> (Bloomsbury). The Two Roberts by Damian Barr is published by Canongate (\u00a318.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What if the protagonist of a novel was not a single person but a couple? 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