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Reinventing Woburn Sands as a Gay Village
(This review is based on a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK)
Although the author of this pleasant and engaging novel sees Woburn Sands as a satellite village of Milton Keynes, the village was there when Milton Keynes was a much smaller “satellite village” of Bletchley. The village is also on the Beds/Bucks border which always used to be crossable at the back garden gate of a very old house known as The Dene. The location matters, because although the gay and lesbian characters might be found anywhere in that region, a trendy gay florist’s selling coffee and cakes as a sideline wouldn’t have the same magic if it were set in Flitwick, for example. And none of the characters earn enough to live in Hitchin, let alone St Albans or London. The equations of economic reality and romantic fantasy require it to be set in Woburn Sands, so it is.
David identifies as a gay florist, but is also a middle-aged man too concerned for the well-being of young women to be trusted to look after his own interests and there are straight men like that, too. A young (by comparison with David) illustrator, Meg, has booked an appointment to discuss flowers for her upcoming wedding to fellow illustrator, Hannah, with David and her parents. Who don’t turn up. Meg is very upset, and David takes her into his shop and starts trying to make things go right for Meg. He persists in doing this for the rest of the novel, with results which veer from acceptable and promising, to muddle, misunderstanding, omission and utter catastrophe, before ending in a most unexpected triumph.
The sub-plot is David’s “significant other” Mark, who really wants them to become a married couple too, patiently trying to steer the man he loves in a less self-denying direction. David reacts to the behaviour of Meg’s parents in a very complicated way, because he had an even worse bust-up with his own parents, who both died before he got around to even seeking a reconciliation. The relationship difficulties are not simply homophobia, because there’s no clear boundary between that and misunderstanding, which on one occasion causes David a lot of hurt even though the other person had no malicious intent whatsoever.
The last quarter of the book, from catastrophe to triumph, has more twists than Tony Blair running the 100 metres sprint and salvation comes, not so much from facing reality as making the best of what you’ve got, even if it’s intangible or outright fantasy. In his determination to hang on to Meg’s dream, David is able to make it a reality, but only after his attempts to do so sensibly have been destroyed by circumstance beyond his control.
Interestingly, part of the solution comes from the youth club which David and Mark are involved with, because whilst the middle-aged gay men fail pretty miserably at communicating with Meg’s elderly and “homophobic” parents, the teenagers simply tell Meg’s parents what the score is and what they need to do. One of the teens also saves David’s business with a social media campaign, but that only takes off due to the wedding being made to happen despite the odds, which is too good a story for broadcast media to ignore.
There’s a lot in this book, and if it has a flaw it’s perhaps that the novel takes on a few too many issues at once. But it’s not a serious fault.
The Stand-in dad by Alex Summers is published by Avon Books on the 24th of April 2025.
