Book Club: A Room Above a Shop
The debut novel by Anthony Shapland gives us a glimpse of a hidden love in the Welsh valleys.
Published in 2025, A Room Above a Shop is the debut novel from Anthony Shapland.
What's it about?
Shapland's story is sparsly told. Set in a mining village in the Welsh valleys in the 1980s, the narrative centres on two men - M and B. M is older, B is younger. The initials may stand for Man and Boy but that is never revealed.
M owns the village hardware store. He employs B to work for him. They both live above the shop but the reality of their relationship is hidden from the rest of the world.
As well as fragments from their day to day lives, we're also given brief glimpses of what's going on in the world around the two men. The story follows them for three years until M's death brings the relationship to a close and leaves B with nothing but grief for what he's lost.
Is A Room Above a Shop worth reading?
This is a look back at what queer life was probably like for men in this time in places such as these - doing their best to navigate a difficult world, their search for intimacy occasionally rewarded with something meaningful.
What makes this particularly interesting is Shapland's style of writing. There's a poetry to it - a rhythm in the economy of words. The writing intentionally as stunted as the characters' ability to communicate, to express their feelings.
You could describe this as a story about loss, of grief. For the death of a character to have emotional impact, you have to also tell the story of the life of that character. That's what Shapland is giving us in this novel - we feel the death of M more acutely because we have been given a sense of the life that he was leading and the man that he was loving.
What are the themes explored in A Room Above a Shop?
M and B are both struggling with their sexuality and how to express how they feel about each other. This internalised homophobia shapes how they present publicly but also how they experience their time together in private.
The novel uses real-world events to give context to the lives being lived by M and B. The miners strike, the moon landing, the AIDS pandemic, and other key moments are all significant milestones that help us understand who these people are.
One theme that is presented but not really explored is the age-gap between M and B. We're told that there is 11 years between M and B but both seem inexperienced and tentative in sharing space with someone else. We don't really get the sense that B is learning much from M - they're muddling through together.
The final stanza of this book shows us B wracked with grief at the sudden loss of M. His loss is made more poignant in that he can't share it or discuss it with anyone - it has to remain a hidden emotion, another thing that he can't share with the world. We also see grief being experienced by M's father in the sudden loss of his wife - a man unmoored by the loss of someone he cared for deeply.
Why is A Room Above a Shop an important novel for gay men?
This is a quiet, gentle story of men doing their best to make a life together in a world in which they feel unwelcome.
It's a way of giving some context to queer history in the UK while still keeping some focus on the power of an authentic connection between two men.
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