Kristi review Hallowed Murder by Ellen Hart

hallowed murder

Jane Lawless thought that walking around the Lake of the Isles would be good for her dogs and her friend, Cordelia Thorn, but things turn serious fast when she discovers the body of a young woman in the water. Worse, she recognizes the body as Allison Lord, one of the young sorority sisters of Kappa Alpha Sigma, for whom Jane is an alumni advisor. While Allison’s death is quickly ruled a suicide, her housemates insist to Jane that she has been murdered. As Jane and Cordelia begin to look into Allison’s life, they find layers of secrets that hide some sinister truths. Between hidden trysts, disinheritance threats, and religious zealots on campus, Jane must discover who actually killed Allison before she becomes the next victim.

Hallowed Murder is the first Jane Lawless book, introducing readers to the lesbian restaurateur and amateur sleuth. Characters that have lasted through the next twenty books are all introduced here: Jane’s brother Peter, a very young Sigrid, and of course the theatrical Cordelia Thorn. One of the most memorable things about Hart’s work is her ability to give the reader multiple viewpoints, from Jane to Allison’s parents to Sigrid. This panoramic view of the story builds suspense, unfolding a story from scene to scene just like a play (which Cordelia would be directing, in her own inimitable way). Hart’s device of introducing her Cast of Characters at the beginning of each book contributes to this theme. However, there is nothing truly theatrical about Jane Lawless, as she treats each case with a sincerity that emphasizes her own internal compass.

While slightly dated, as any book published in 1989 would probably be, Jane Lawless is an iconic figure in lesbian mysteries, and her stories are ongoing.

Link Round Up: March 21-26

sisterspitcover1   Lemon Reef   howpoetrysaved

Autostraddle posted Liberty Lit #16: We Log Onto Facebook In Order To Live and Swapping Spit: The Sister Spit Anthology & A Few Words with Michelle Tea.

Butch In Progress posted Natalie Barney & her salon – or: Lesbian Paradise.

Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian posted Springtime Book Tours and Prizes, Prizes, Prizes: Rae Spoon, Alex Leslie, Anne Fleming, Amber Dawn, and Imogen Binnie!

Lambda Literary posted Bits & Pieces: Spring Lesbian Mystery Roundup

Queer Books Please posted Episode 10 – Cheerleaders Etc.

Women and Words posted Hot off the Press, March 2013 and Coming Attractions for April, 2013.

heiressesofruss   monstroussea   KickedOut

emily m danforth was interviewed at Story Carnivores.

Sarah and Jennifer Diemer posted

Malinda Lo posted Heiresses of Russ and other news.

Sassafras Lowrey posted The Supreme Court can’t help queer kids but you can.

Andi Marquette posted Isn’t it romantic? Romance as a genre (including the F/F romance formula).

TrailofHearts   willacather   CallingDrLaura

Intimate Letters of Willa Cather Reveal “Emotional Attachments” to Women (found via Lambda Literary).

Calling Dr Laura by Nicole Georges was reviewed at things mean a lot.

Trail of Hearts by Kate Richards was reviewed at Loving Venus – Loving Mars.

Murphy’s Law by Yolanda Wallace was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

The Watson Evidence by Rosalyn Wraight was reviewed at Loving Venus – Loving Mars.

For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s twitter page! We’re also on Facebook.

Click the covers to get to their Amazon listings. If you buy something, I may get a small referral fee.

Jill reviews Radiant Days by Elizabeth Hand

3

As a warning right off the bat: if you’re looking for a book that primarily focuses on lesbian relationships, this is not the book for you. While both of our protagonists end up being queer, the plot of the novel doesn’t really revolve around love interests at all. And in a way, that’s a lovely thing, that one’s queerness can simply be a minor detail, that it doesn’t have to factor in as a “conflict” in a story whatsoever.

The story of Radiant Days is rather about art. And the quirkiness factor is that the two protagonists live centuries apart: one is Merle, an art school drop out living in Washington, DC in the late 1970s; the other is Arthur, a poor poet trying to run away from home in the French countryside in the late 1800s, right as Paris is about to be besieged by Prussia. Interestingly, Merle’s story is told in first person, while Arthur’s is from the third person; we accordingly feel closer to the emotions of Merle, but Arthur is the character based on a real historical figure: Arthur Rimbaud, a famous poet whose work has influenced scores of modern musicians.

At the beginning of the book, Merle’s muse is her former art teacher who she’s also having an affair with, Clea, a selfish married woman who uses Merle and her art. It’s hard to know how much Clea truly cares for Merle, or how much Merle truly cares about her, but there is an artistic bond that ties them together–all of Merle’s drawings, on paper and covering the walls of her room, are of Clea. That is, until she starts tagging her signature “Radiant Days” graffiti mark around DC. It’s when she’s suddenly lost everything except for a can of spray paint that she runs into an old man fishing in a canal, who eventually leads her to Arthur Rimbaud.

While most of Radiant Days reads as realistic fiction, the heart of the story itself is fantasy, as Arthur and Merle’s worlds are able to somehow shift time and meld together for brief but fantastic moments, one transported into the life of the other, and eventually, vice versa. While these shared moments altogether only count for hours of each of their long lives, they make lasting, deep impressions on each other. It would be interesting to debate with others who have read the novel about how exactly to classify the relationship between Arthur and Merle. I personally didn’t feel that it was sexual, or even romantic, in any sort of a way, but was rather a more unexplainable bond even deeper than that, or a different sort of love, bridged by art.

I first heard of this novel on Malinda Lo’s recommendation, and while I normally love books she recommends, it took me a long time to get through this one. Which almost feels embarrassing, as it’s by no means a very long book, and I am a huge fan of art, and stories about art in all shapes and forms. I also love history, and I love DC, and I love relationships that don’t fit into qualitative boxes–so by all counts, this seemed like it should be a winner for me. But by the time I pushed through the end, I only felt sort of relieved that I could finally move on to the next book on my stack. Whenever this happens, I always wonder if it’s the book itself, or if it’s me–I had an incredibly busy month and could only read this in short bursts here and there, which almost always takes the magic out of any reading experience. But at the same time, maybe it still should have pulled me in, either way. I felt like it took too long for Arthur and Merle’s stories to connect, and hence for the overall point of the book to feel solid and meaningful. And while the writing was, on one hand, absolutely beautiful in many points, I almost felt like it was too flowery at other points, that there were too many adjectives and metaphors and throughout the entire thing, I had to go back and re-read sentences over and over again when I realized I had no idea what I had just read. Which typically doesn’t happen in YA, which this book is. This is not to say that language in YA shouldn’t be difficult; of course, I think it CAN be, and good reading that challenges you is typically a very good thing. But this felt not like it was challenging my brain, but simply making my brain glaze over in a distracting way.

That all said, I don’t regret reading this at all, and did find so many aspects of it fascinating: I previously knew nothing of Arthur Rimbaud, and little of the French-Prussian war, and I did absolutely love the character of the old, fishing musician man, along with the eventually revealed myth behind him. Elizabeth Hand is also an extremely prolific and successful writer of both adult and youth fiction, winning many prestigious awards, so the effect of her writing on me is clearly purely personal. If you’ve read any of her work before, or if you’re interested in art and poetry, I would still recommend picking up Radiant Days.

Danika reviews Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family and Identity by Candace Walsh

LickingtheSpoon

One of the first books I reviewed for the Lesbrary was Dear John, I Love Jane edited by Candace Walsh and Laura Andre. I loved that book, both for the topic (complicating sexual orientation? Yes please) and the quality of the stories. So when I saw that one of the editors had written a memoir, I was excited to see if it lived up to the enthusiasm I had for Dear John, I Love Jane. I was not disappointed. I haven’t read any other food memoirs or food writing (… I don’t even know what the genre is called!), so I’m not sure how Licking the Spoon compares to the usual fare. The book isn’t about food as much as food is an ongoing theme; it adds a layer through which to interpret Walsh’s life, because her food choices reflect something about the way her life is going, whether she’s cooking up gourmet feasts or pennies-per-serving pea soup or frozen dinners.

Most importantly, I loved Walsh’s writing style. It flows well and kept me engaged regardless of what was being described. It’s funny, because Walsh describes being disappointed by her mother’s embellished stories about her family, but Licking the Spoon has such detailed, rich stories about her own life and previous generations’ lives that they can’t possibly be just the facts. Either way, it made it an absorbing read that I really enjoyed, and Walsh definitely has a life story worth telling.

I couldn’t find anything on the book itself that hints to queer content (though the Amazon description does), which I found interesting. The first chapter plays the pronoun game with her love interest. The queer content is introduced slowly, from hints in her childhood through dissatisfaction with her (heterosexual) marriage. I am always divided on this, because on the one hand, that makes it difficult for queer people to be able to find this book unless they’re researching online. On the other hand, I love the idea that straight readers could unknowingly pick this book up. It doesn’t categorize itself as only a queer book, and it isn’t! The memoir is much more about Walsh’s relationship with food, her family, and herself than it is about being queer. And it looks like this strategy was successful, because the Amazon ratings on this book are ridiculously high: of 39 reviews, 36 are five star and 3 are four star.

Whether you’re a foodie or a fan of lesbian memoirs, or you just like good writing telling a story well, I would definitely recommend Licking the Spoon and I hope to read more from Candace Walsh!

Sponsored review: Danika reviews Carapace by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro

Carapace

I am not the one who cums. It’s her mouth. Alexia’s mouth cums inside me. Shortly before, just by a few seconds, her fingers have ejaculated within me. The electricity has traversed my skins. I have several skins. She has discovered them all and has placed them over me.

Those are the opening lines of Carapace, and from the beginning I was intrigued and disoriented. This is not a straightforward lesbian romance book. It is an abstract, poetic work. At its best, it reminded me of Jeanette Winterson’s surreal, metaphorical language. I have to assume that the book reads differently in the original language, because some of the lines are clunky in a way that suggests an awkward, literal translation of a poetic turn of phrase. (For example: “The mint green place that is our mistress room lacks her physiognomy.”) There is also the occasional typo, and these factors combined can make this a difficult novel to read at times.

Still, after getting used to the style, it began to have a sort of soothing, dreamlike feel to it. Carapace reads almost as if each chapter is a journal entry: each is semi-disconnected, and some chapters are only a paragraph long. Time is not entirely linear. Sometimes it goes off on a tangent about ecoterrorism, or turtles, or newly discovered planets (all recurring topics). There are moments that veer towards magical realism, such as the “shadow” that occupies Nessa and Alexia’s home that only Alexia can see.

Though not exactly a romance, Carapace is focused on Nessa and Alexia’s relationship. It is passionate, engrossing, and definitely dysfunctional. Alexia is married to a man, and splits her time between Nessa and their child, her husband and their child, and travelling the world as she covers stories about environmentalism activism. The story is about Nessa and how she deals with Alexia and her absence. The emotion was poignant, and the poetic language helped to highlight the push-and-pull of Nessa desire and anger for Alexia. Overall, I really thought this was a beautiful book. Despite some of the issues with the translation, and that the plot circles back on itself more than it advances, I enjoyed Carapace. If you enjoy literary, poetic books that focus on emotion and language more than a strict plot, than I would recommend Carapace. I would love to hear a comparison between the original Spanish version and the English translation, because I’m sure I would have liked it even better if I could read the original. (Carapace is the “first lesbian book published in Puerto Rico.” Technically, it was written in Puerto Rico and published in Spain, but either way, I love reading lesbian books that aren’t written/set in the West, and I hope that the translation of Carapace is a sign of more to come!)

This has been a sponsored review. For more information on sponsored reviews, please check out the Lesbrary’s review policy.

Anna M reviews Without Warning by KG Macgregor

WithoutWarning

Taking my cue from a comment on my last review, I read another KG MacGregor book, this time Without Warning. The book is the first in her Shaken series, which originated as Xena-based fanfiction (available here). In Without Warning, lawyer Lily Stewart and car dealer Anna Kaklis are both inside a mall in Los Angeles when an earthquake causes portions of the building to collapse. In a clothing store when the quake hit, Lily encounters and frees Anna, who is trapped under a fallen bookshelf in a different store. The women join forces to escape the crumbling structure, which is being wracked by aftershocks. After making some progress toward an exit, and learning more about one another, Anna manages to get help for Lily when her asthma threatens to suffocate her.

The earthquake and mutual life-saving creates a deep bond between the women, but a mix-up means that they don’t see each other for seven months–on the day of Anna’s divorce from the unsuitable Scott. Once reunited, the women find themselves drawn to one another, although the out Lily worries whether she can keep her feelings for the Amazonian Anna strictly platonic. Their path to couple-dom is a little bumpy–family pressure in the form of Anna’s conservative father and a misunderstanding that makes Lily doubt Anna’s feelings–but happily resolved.

I liked several things about this romance. First, the pace was slow. Lily and Anna don’t fall in love at first sight (it is, after all, extremely dark in the wrecked mall). They have a chance to get acquainted when they’re stuck together waiting for rescue; otherwise they would have been very unlikely to cross paths socially or professionally. Lily comes out to Anna almost immediately–there’s none of that “I didn’t tell her and if I tell her now she’ll wonder why I lied about it” stuff–and it takes Anna a while to figure out the direction of her feelings, including a visit to her college crush. I liked the consistent thread of humor throughout the book, especially the teasing interactions between the main characters. Without Warning reminds me, in the best way, of some of my favorite Xena uber fiction, including work by Ann McMan and Melissa Good.

But I really need to stop reading books with characters named Anna.

 

Kit reviews The Pyramid Waltz by Barbara Ann Wright

ThePyramidWaltz

The Pyramid Waltz/Barbara Ann Wright

Bold Strokes Books, December 2012

213 pages – ebook

To most, Princess Katya Nar Umbriel is a rogue and a layabout; she parties, she hunts and she breaks women’s hearts. But when the festival lights go down and the palace slumbers, Katya chases traitors to the crown and protects the kingdoms greatest secret: the royal Umbriels are part Fiend. When Katya thwarts an attempt to expose the kings monstrous side, she uncovers a plot to let the Fiends out to play. Starbride has no interest in being a courtier. Ignoring her mother’s order to snare an influential spouse, she comes to court only to study law. But a flirtatious rake of a princess proves hard to resist, and Starbride is pulled into a world of secrets that leaves little room for honesty or love, a world neither woman may survive. — Kobo synopsis

Now, readers: not only am I an old-school Lynn Flewelling fan, but I’m also a queer woman with a pulse. If the dishabille exploits of Seregil of Rhiminee and his awed lover Alec had me grinning and giggling all over the place, then just imagine what the rakish, insouciant Katya Nar Umbriel and the intrepid Starbride did to me, and you have the heart of this book. The Pyramid Waltz has had me smiling for three days.

In terms of plot, it’s mostly what it says on the tin. Lots of chases. Lots of alleyways and castles and ballrooms and bedrooms. We meet the fiendish princess Katya as she is chasing a traitor across her father’s hunting grounds, all whilst Averie (who is quite possibly the best lady in waiting of all time) hunts deer for her so that she can keep up the ruse of being forever out and about after wildlife. Starbride, meanwhile, is tolerating being treated as an “exotic” oddity by the princess’s court only because it gives her accezs to the library, and to laws that will, she hopes, stop these richer neighbors from exploiting her land. They meet. Sparks fly. Sparkly things are exchanged, along with kisses and gorgeous— if broad—banter, All the dialogue seems to come from the Mercedes Lackey school of feel what you’re feeling before saying it adverbially, and the novel also reads a little bit as if Wright read Dianna Wynne Jone’s Tough Guide to Fantasy Land (tavern brawls and all!) and decided to follow it verbatim. But it is so much fun that I really don’t care. I also haven’t actually read this assortment of cliches in a world that is entirely unfazed by homosexuality or female power before. I think I love it.

The characters are all kindly drawn—keep an eye out for Katya’s blustering father, and a hilarious aside about his inability to read his children bedtime tales because he kept trying to find the racy bits. The masked Pennynail is also a hoot, and one of the few actually mysterious parts of the mystery. I also loved that while the relationship between Starbride and Katya was near-instantaneous, they also misunderstand each other regularly and tried to get into each other’s worlds—Starbride much more successfully than the more privileged Katya. One thing the novel does surprisingly well is address colonialism and white privilege, albeit briefly. There is a very strange take on master and servant relations in Starbride’s home might be dubious, but that was the only real quibble I had with The Pyramid Waltz once I’d settled in for the romp. Mostly, I’m just delighted this book exists.

(…and is there any waltzing involved, darlings? Read to find out!)

Link Round Up: March 14-20

12   GayPress   11

Autostraddle posted Read A F*cking Book: Gay Press, Gay Power.

Lambda Literary posted Read Eileen Myles’ Excerpt from Lambda’s ’25 for 25′ E-book.

Queer Books Please posted Episode 9 – Werewolves.

beyond_binary_lethe_2012   13   14

Sarah Diemer posted

Nicola Griffith posted Good lesbian science fiction novels.

Malinda Lo posted It’s 6 months till INHERITANCE: How about a teaser?

15   17   16

Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Papers in America edited by Tracy Baim was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Proxy by R. Erica Doyle was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

The Night Is a Mouth by Lisa Foad was reviewed by Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian.

Prairie Silence: A Memoir by Melanie Hoffert was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson was discussed by Liz Boltz Ranfeld.

Clicking the covers will take you to the item’s listing on Amazon, and if you buy something I may get a small referral fee.

Check out more links on the Lesbrary’s twitter account! We’re also on Facebook!

Erica Gillingham reviews The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

TheEssentialDykestoWatchOutForDTWOF

I had heard of Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel long before Bechdel published her first graphic memoir, Fun Home. But, not being one of the cool kids, I didn’t read it. Fast-forward many years, some Christmas money and one gay bookstore later and I finally had my very own copy of The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For in my lovely lady hands. The fun was to begin!

A collection of strips chronically the DTWOF series, published from 1987 to 2008, The Essential DTWOF is an incredible gift to those of us born too late to enjoy them in their initial incarnations. Bechdel opens the collection with a graphic introduction that not only gives insight into the origins and ethos of DTWOF but a smidgen of Bechdel’s wonderful madness. An intelligent, intense attention to detail that is necessary in order to so skillful combine personalities, identities, community, love and politics in comic form.

Like the opening of any novel, I carefully watched as these independent characters began to take on their full personalities: refractions of lesbian identities embodied in myriad guises, ticks, and quirks. But, unlike the plain written word, I also got to witness as Bechdel refined each character, moving from strength to strength in the comic: Mo and Toni’s quaffs reach nuanced status, Lois’s swagger oozes, and newspapers offer rotating headlines of the week.

Halfway through DTWOF I kept making excuses in avoidance of my daily life—“Emails can wait, right? I didn’t want to do dishes today anyway.”—in order to carry on reading. I thoroughly enjoyed the twists and complications and emotional freak-outs of these devoted heroines with each turn of the page. Politics and life become inextricable when the Bush years hit at the turn of the 21st century and reading gets a bit heavy. If I ever I needed a reminder of what it was like to live under the Bush administration, this comic reflects some of my biggest worries from that time. But, the characters continue as their engaging selves and the way Bechdel handles 9/11, well, let’s just say it’s pitch perfect.

For those that are looking for a tidy ending to an elegant series, you won’t find it here.  The comic ends as it begins: mid-moment in a community of messy, human lives. That said, there is a kind of relief in the final moments of The Essential DTWOF: it’s as if the video feed from the dykes’ world has been simply closed off with Mo, Sydney, Lois, Clarice, Toni, Ginger, Sparrow and the others carrying on without our watchful eye and it is our job, as the readers, to remember all that they taught us.

Laura reviews “Wine For A Shotgun” by Marty McConnell

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Wine For A Shotgun by Marty McConnell is the most beautiful collection of poetry I’ve ever read. Now, a caveat: I say this as a reader of fiction who is generally interested in — but hasn’t read read an awful lot of — poetry. Like Danika, I often don’t feel feel qualified to write about it. However, I’m not going to let that stop me, especially if I find something awesome. Like this.

Wine For A Shotgun deftly pulls apart the knotted mess of gender, sexuality, love, and fidelity. The collection unravels along two threads: one largely autobiographical series following McConnell’s childhood, her relationships with various family members, and experiences as a secret keeper; and another series that pushes outside of her life, inspired by the traditional Tarot deck.

In the universe of Wine For A Shotgun, human emotion changes the very fabric of reality. For example, in “When Your Ex-girlfriend’s Sister Corners You in the Kitchen,” the room comes alive in a tense situation: “you can hear / the filaments in the ceiling fixture / sizzle, the glue under the linoleum starting / to bubble. all the liquor in the house is in / the other room and your mouth is a desert / with a side of sand, you are stranded / on the moon with a woman who thinks / you can make the atmosphere breathable / just by believing it.” Of course, we all know that you can’t make the atmosphere of the moon breathable through belief alone. It’s an absurd, false choice. Yet queer people are asked to pull off similarly impossible decisionmaking feats all the time. In the above poem, the subject has been cornered and taken to task on her “queer status.” As a bisexual woman, I really appreciate the way McConnell frames the issue.

McConnell’s background is in slam poetry, and the influence is apparent in many of her poems. The cadence of “The Magician Is A Drag King,” for example, just begs to be heard aloud: “you’re a sucker / for the sideshow and I’m your spirit / gum queen, your strapped-down / goddess, your husband with a little extra / in between, I’m Venus with a goatee / I markered on myself, no Hottentot / can shame me, you can’t mock / this, I made this, my playlist / is gay bliss, go on DJ, / break it down – everybody / wants somebody. every body wants / some body. everybody wants. some. / body.”

As in the above, McConnell has a knack for picking underexplored topics — particularly queer ones — and taking a graceful, headfirst dive in to plumb the depths. In “The Chariot in Love,” she writes about the experience of being in love with a person undergoing gender transition. In “Queen of Rods on Top” she gives a big, sassy wink and a nod to genderqueer sex. In “The Fool and Her Hunger” she writes about going to a lesbian dance club in Brooklyn. Though some topics are arguably more serious than others, McConnell gives careful consideration to each, and finds significance where others might easily overlook it. It is this quality which multiplies the importance of her work. Plus, like I said: her writing is really beautiful.

Wine For a Shotgun is currently a lambda award finalist under the category of lesbian poetry. Marty McConnell is performing April 2 at the Urbana Poetry Slam in New York City.