SOURCE: “Only the Lonely,” in Times Literary Supplement, August 2, 1991, p. 19.

In the following review of Secret Lives: Three Novellas, Davenport-Hines judges King's novella, a tale of emotional isolation, as the strongest in the collection, which also includes novellas by Tom Wakefield and Patrick Gale.

By far the most arresting of the three novellas in this collection is that by Francis King [Secret Lives] which gives the volume its title. This tells the story of a poor Japanese painter named Osamu who comes to London to escape a forced marriage, and becomes the houseboy and lover of a QC, Sir Brian Cobean. The latter is an elegant, persuasive, ruthless, stealthy homosexual who has ruined his wife's life and lives in the grandeur of Holland Park. He falls ill with pneumonia, loses weight, tells his family he has leukaemia, eventually dies of meningitis. Osamu nurses Brian, holds him as he...