A Single Man

Wait...what?!

A Single Man completely caught me off guard, and not just because I went into reading it blind. It starts out charming and then quietly slides into absurdity.

The novel follows George, a middle-aged man moving through a single day in LA after the death of his partner, Jim. Very little happens externally, but internally the book is buzzing with grief, desire, irritation, and razor-sharp social observation.

George’s voice is the book’s greatest strength. It’s dry, intelligent, funny, and painfully self-aware. At one point he thinks, “Yes, I am crazy. That is my secret; my strength,” a line that perfectly captures how Isherwood allows irony, defiance, and vulnerability to coexist. The narration balances detachment and emotional precision without tipping into sentimentality.

Structurally and tonally, this reminded me of Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway"-- a book that compress a life’s worth of emotion into a narrow window of time and rely on interiority rather than plot. If you like literary fiction that feels controlled on the surface but emotionally volatile underneath, this is very much in that vein.

And, oh man, at the end of the novel, Isherwood doesn’t soften the landing at all. He goes out with a bang. The tonal shift may be abrupt and unsettling, but it works. Instead of offering comfort or closure, the novel insists on randomness, mortality, and the illusion of control. It’s the kind of ending that makes you pause and think, "wait—what just happened?" and then, slowly, "oh!".

A Single Man is smart, strange, and memorable. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoy sharp narrative voices, character-driven literary fiction, and books that aren’t afraid to end on a dark or unexpected note.