It’s a tale as simple as its title. Two men meet somewhere in the region of Merthyr Tydfil, they work in an independent DIY shop together, and share a single room upstairs. They love each other for a bit, they fall out for a bit, they patch stuff up. As an elevator pitch I wonder how Shapland managed it. But oh sweet God of syntax, it comes alive in the telling:

“Sooner shoot their sons than father men like that, meting out disgrace in everlasting fire. Sinners, sodomites, unnatural and debased. Papers shout of abominations, a disease, a cancer, a terror, a time bomb, a plague, of men like that swirling in the cesspit of their own making.”

Our protagonists’ names are M and B. Just that. It’s a thoughtful touch, the sense that secrecy and erasure run so deep they linger to this day, that these identities still need protecting. Most of the activity takes place within the confines of the shop or the room above it, a constriction which suffocates, as the hostility of the outside society forces M and B to act like mere acquaintances in moments of high emotion. The novella works hard to bring this to the fore, the psychic disjunction of maintaining two separate lives in tandem. Much of the action is left unsaid, a decision which helps to juxtapose the intimacy of the upstairs room with the cool detachment the coworkers display in the public.

Early versions of certain chapters have appeared in anthologies as short stories, and this self-contained quality still runs through the work, with chapters finding their own thematic focus whilst subtly nudging the action along, as if by accident. Whole paragraphs read like prose poems; condensed, concise, an awareness of minutiae and the linguistic facility to render it lyrical:

“Scent is intense, almost visible. It wraps, tugs, makes them aware of the grit and slick of the world, the salt of a lick and the sweat and spill of pleasure.”

Days pass by in such sentences, and it’s through this melding of action into a montage of sensations that the novella’s poetry shines.

That said, Shapland is wise to keep the story short (at 145 sparsely-typed pages it’s a breezy day’s read) as there’s a risk inherent with this style of writing. Too much time spent in languid poetics makes me long for a straightforward sentence; even an instruction manual begins to seem preferable, or – perish the thought – Hemingway. As it stands, Shapland keeps the pace flowing nicely, and any of the more airy descriptive moments are counter-scored by the poignant awkwardness of bodies, and sex, and families. Particularly good are the parental observations; unwilling to fall into easy judgement, Shapland sits with a mixture of uncomfortable emotions as parents and their children try clumsily to love one another.

If you’re looking for a novel that captures Wales in the 80’s, this isn’t it. The effect of Shapland’s prose is closer to Super8 footage than to documentary film. When historical events are referred to, they are referred to in character: “The year he turned nine, the black mountain swallowed the school”. This presumably refers to the Aberfan disaster, but the onus of understanding lies squarely on the reader. Despite all the interiority, all the time spent rummaging through their heads, the characters never snap into distinction, never become fully rounded flesh and bone humans that a reader could sit down for drinks with. Neither of these men seem to have any hobbies or interests. In place of hyper-realism we’re left with a series of snapshot moments imbued with all the nostalgia and melancholy of a distant memory. I felt, when reading it, the way I feel looking through disposable film pictures; a sense that somewhere along the line something I never quite held has been irretrievably lost.

Considering its brevity, the novella packs a punch. If good writers carry knives, Shapland also carries a copy of Gray’s Anatomy: he knows exactly where the heart is, and gets in there as deftly as possible. It seems crude to describe so delicate a story this way, but that’s how it feels when the end comes round. Cold sharp steel. Stab stab.