Mars-Jones, Adam

(British, 1954– )

Born in London, son of a High Court judge, Mars-Jones has worked as an arts journalist and established a reputation for subtly satirical, carefully nuanced fiction. His first collection of stories, Lantern Lecture (1981), was acclaimed for its witty observation and coolly descriptive prose, recreating the life of an eccentric aristocrat, and, more seriously, the criminal career and trial of Donald Neilson, the so-called ‘Black Panther’. In ‘Hoosh-Mi’, the Queen catches rabies from a corgi. With The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (1988, with Edmund White), Mars-Jones's subjects became much darker, but comic details sometimes impinge upon the death and dying of AIDS patients. In ‘An Executor’, for instance, a ‘buddy’ has difficulty disposing of leather fetish gear following the death of a friend. Monopolies of Loss (1992) is a further collection of beautifully crafted, moving stories about HIV and AIDS. In The Waters of Thirst (1993), Mars-Jones's belated first novel, kidney disease rather than AIDS is the subject, but amusing observations of affluent gay lifestyles prevent the story from being too grim.

Armistead Maupin, Christopher Isherwood, Edmund White  JS