He was the boy who bullied Fen. Years later, Alfie Bell wants to make it right in 'Pansies'
Flowers that look like dead cabbages, and another Alexis Hall book that gets grief right
Alexis Hall’s fourth Spires book swaps the dreaming spires for a regional English town and still carries every theme that makes the series what it is.
‘Pansies’ is the fourth book in the Spires series, and it’s become one of my most-recommended Alexis Hall titles , despite a pocket of fans online arguing it doesn’t really belong in the series at all.
Published in 2016, the novel is set outside Oxford, in the regional English town Alfie Bell and Fen O’Donaghue both grew up in, and both left.
Fen was the stubborn gay kid who wouldn’t keep his head down at school; Alfie was the golden boy who bullied him for it.
Years later, back in that same small town, the pair are forced to reckon with who they were to each other… and who they might become.
Alfie reminds me of a handful of friends I have: big, bullish on the surface, and quietly, deeply sensitive underneath it.
The shift away from Oxford has drawn some minor criticism online, with a few readers arguing ‘Pansies’ shouldn’t count as a proper Spires book.
I don’t buy it. ‘Pansies’ carries similar themes the Spires series is built on: class, mental illness and clinical depression, regional divides, internalised homophobia, grief and trauma, and the friction between intellectual elitism and emotional vulnerability.
I’ve taken to buying flowering kale in Fen’s honour, which is either a lovely tribute or an extremely niche flex, depending who you ask.
‘Pansies’ was nominated for both a RITA Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and it closes out the four published Spires books on exactly the note it should: messy, sincere and hard-won.
Hall has spoken about more Spires stories being on the way, which, four books in, feels like very good news.
READ MORE: Start from the beginning with ‘Glitterland’, the book that started it all