Let's keep this brief because I really do not want to be writing this. But here we are.

I try not to write DNF reviews but this is historical smut trying to disguise itself as a thoughtful queer text. It's not. I bailed at just shy of the halfway point and it's a miracle I made it as far as I did. Queer City tows a dangerous line, often not well, and creates a superficial and reckless portrayal of premodern queerness. Ackroyd writes of queerness as merely sexual deviancy through a cluttered laundry list of disconnected anecdotes. There is no structure to be found here. There is no historical context. Ackroyd jumps from the Knights Templar to Shakespeare with little warning, and leaves the reader with serious whiplash trying to keep up. After a certain point, it’s not worth it. Had this book a modicum of structure and greater care for the sociology of queerness, this could’ve been a fascinating study. Instead, it reads as voyeuristic, never truly taking its subject matter seriously.

I cannot overstate the harm this book possesses: if you position yourself as a queer historian, focusing solely on sexual deviancy and the fetishisation of young males perpetuates the narrative that queerness is only a strange curiosity or, worse yet, that it is reprehensible. My frustration with this text is not that it’s an info dump, not that its scope is far too extreme, not that it doesn’t do enough to examine the sociological conditions of premodern London, but that queer lives are about more than sex. There has to be nuance and multifaceted empathy in how we talk about gay histories; this missed the bar in every conceivable way. If you’re looking for a meaningful dialogue on queer histories, you will not find it here.

Peter Ackroyd, we need to talk.