Prince Hal & Bloody Marys
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HENRY HENRY
by Allen Bratton
Unnamed Press. 350 pages, $29.

ALLEN BRATTON is an American writer whose first novel, Henry Henry, transfers Shakespeare’s “Prince Hal” (Henry V, 1386–1422) to the year 2014, when old Catholic families and a hereditary upper class still exist in England, but theology and rank seem increasingly irrelevant to the issues of the day. The Hal of the novel is a handsome, apparently aimless young man who spends much time getting drunk and high when not having casual sex with his pal Jack Falstaff. Along comes Henry Percy, a long-term acquaintance whose titled family has known Hal’s family for generations. A comparison of the complex relationship of these two characters with that of their historical counterparts is instructive: Shakespeare’s Percy is the archenemy of the man who eventually becomes Henry V.