Tag reviews Reclaiming the L-Word: Sappho’s Daughters Out in Africa edited by Alleyn Diesel

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Danika Ellis

Reviewing this book was a decision I kind of hem-hawed about with, mostly because it’s about lesbian-identified women in/from the African continent, and as someone who’s never been to the African continent or anywhere close, I felt like yes, I should probably leave this one alone since these are experiences I could never really claim, and wouldn’t try to. But having read it I feel the real need to review it, to get out there that this is a really amazing, touching book and I think it can speak to anyone on any level.

It’s a non-fiction set of autobiographical stories, which is the first thing that attracted me to it. To see women, lesbian women, telling their own stories and having them published is still a rarity, and as a lesbian I always want to know more about what other lesbians all over the globe are going through. There’s this common theme in all our stories, and at the same time I’m upset to see anyone else go through the same pain and heartache, it’s comforting to not be alone. One thing to keep in mind is how very different every experience is, and I think this volume shows that well. There are women who identify as lesbian and women who do not, there are transgendered women, there are women who received support from their families and women who did not. Some women are from countries where discrimination against them and their partners is illegal but unenforced, some are from countries where discrimination is not only legal but societally encouraged as well; some of them were pulled out of the closet and some of them came out themselves. All of them hit home with me, and by the end of each woman’s story I felt like they’d been speaking directly to me personally.

These stories are real and heartfelt in a way that really brings them home, exactly the way I was hoping when I picked this book up (or opened its PDF, if you want to get technical). It isn’t something that you have to relate to in order to understand where these women are coming from, it’s very approachable and for that reason I think it’s a fantastic volume, a read that I would recommend to anyone.

My absolute favorite part of this book is the poetry by Mavourneen Finlayson throughout the whole text, in between most of the pieces. It brings together whatever pain or hope each piece put forward or makes you feel, kind of smoothing everything over and cleansing the palate for the next part. Her poems are all amazing and unique, and often I find in poetry that anything queer is a surprise, but in each of hers it’s latent throughout the whole poem, no matter its length. Her poetry brings the whole theme together, I think, in that the theme is exactly what it’s stated to be: reclaiming the L-word, by, for and about Sappho’s daughters Out in Africa.

Casey reviews Wildthorn by Jane Eagland

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Danika Ellis

A nineteenth-century insane asylum seems hardly an appropriate place for a teenage lesbian romance. Jane Eagland, though, manages to make this both believable and exciting in her young adult novel, Wildthorn. This historical tale is not just a romance, though that was my favourite part; in fact, a larger portion of the book is dedicated to interrogating some of the atrocious Victorian social attitudes to mental illness and gender non-conformity. The “isn’t-it-horrible-what-they-did-to-women-back-in-the-day” is a bit heavy-handed and reductive at times, though; what bothers me mostly about this is the implication that nowadays women are ‘free’ from sexism. Actually, what I found remarkable —and at the same time depressing, of course—is how certain sexist belief systems, like victim-blaming, are at work in this fictional Victorian universe and are still alive and well today, albeit in different forms.

So the novel deals with some pretty serious issues, and it’s not as light as you might imagine; or, at least as I imagined when I picked it up wanting a cute, melodramatic romantic thriller. Louisa Cosgrove is from a middle-class English family and she’s, of course, exhibiting all the typical signs of baby dykedom: she wants to follow in her father’s footsteps and be a doctor; she has no interest in feminine pursuits like needlepoint and pointless social calls; she has very strong feelings for her older cousin Grace. While her life is already in shambles following the death of her father, Louisa ends up being sent to Wildthorn asylum, and you’re left in suspense for most of the book as to how or why this happened. Was it her jealous, underachieving brother who orchestrated this? Has she been mistaken for someone else?

The novel is a bit of a slog in the middle section, where Louisa is trapped in the asylum; this is how Louisa feels, of course, so on the one hand Eagland is mirroring Louisa’s experience. On the other, it gets a bit tiring, and depressing. Once the romance picks up, though, the book gets pretty exciting; plus there’s the whole issue of how she is going to escape!

If you love Sarah Waters and have already plowed through all her books, I would recommend picking up Wildthorn. It’s an obvious connection to make, but I really think Eagland nails the same kind of Victorian melodrama that Waters does, in the spirit of some of my favourite nineteenth century British writers. I love how a lot of the chapters end with a dramatic cliff-hanger, such as “It’s all been in vain, I’m going to die…”. The dot, dot, dot, of course, is key. Unlike Waters, though, because Wildthorn is a book for teens, you don’t get the fun racy sex scenes. But it is a little more explicit than the original Brontës, so there’s that, and it might tide you over until Sarah Waters’s next book is out.

Also, if you want feminist historical young adult fiction set in Victorian England, I highly recommend Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle series, which has some paranormal/fantasy elements as well as an awesome lesbian character!

Hannah intereviews Cari Hunter

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Danika Ellis

Cari Hunter, author of Snowbound, has kindly agreed to answer some questions for this blog.

Cari Hunter, can you introduce yourself in a few words/lines?

I live near Manchester in north-west England with my partner and two cats. I’ve been a paramedic for eleven years and, more recently, an author with Bold Strokes Books. I like hiking, baking, running, writing, catching up on sleep, and frogs – though not necessarily in that order and certainly not at the same time.

As a child and teenager what were the books that made an impression on you?

Growing up, I read voraciously. Sending me to my room as a punishment never worked, as that was where all my books were. Ian Serraillier’s The Silver Sword shaped a lot of my summer holiday playtime, then later I developed a big crush on Nancy Drew. And if anyone knows the twist at the end of The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler you’ll understand why that was another one of my favourites.

Who are your favorite authors today and do you think their writings influence your own?

I’m a fan of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series, the first three of which are my regular comfort rereads. More recently, I’ve raced my way through all of Karin Slaughter’s novels. Occasionally her plots are a little shaky, but her character development and story arcs just keep you coming back. She’s also very funny, which is unexpected given the gruesome nature of her themes. Last year, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein stopped me in my tracks and then broke my heart. It’s a long time since a book has done that to me and I’ll recommend it to anyone and everyone till I’m blue in the face. I’m not sure about these authors influencing me, but I’d love to be half as good as them.

Who are your favorite lesbian authors?

I’ve only recently got back into reading ‘LesFic’ – the local lesbian book shop closed its doors a few years ago and I fell out of the habit of keeping up with new releases. Sarah Dreher was my first LesFic experience and remains one of my favourite authors. I love her snappy dialogue, her sense of humour and her supporting characters. There’s a real nostalgia to picking up her books these days, which also adds to their charm.

How many books have you written so far? Have you written anything else?

I’ve had two novels published with BSB – Snowbound and Desolation Point – and my third, Tumbledown, is due out in 2014. I’m currently working on a new story; it’s not contracted at the moment, but I live in hope.

I wrote a whole series of fan fiction for the Terminator TV show (Sarah Connor and I have a long-abiding love affair) plus some shorter pieces for Rizzoli & Isles, which is a crappy show but very fun to fic. I haven’t written any fanfic for a while, but it makes for a nice change of pace so I’ll almost certainly get back to it at some point.

What inspired you to write your first novel?

It’s more “who” than “what”: my partner. She wanted a story for Christmas, so I set about writing Snowbound for her. I never imagined it would turn out to be a novel; it was certainly never conceived as such, which explains its rather unconventional structure. Unfortunately for my partner, once I got the writing bug I went off on a tangent and ended up writing a couple of novels’ worth of Sarah Connor fic while she waited for her Christmas present. I did buy her something in the meantime though – I’m not a total cheapskate.

Would you say that you write lesbian fiction or novels where lesbians are the main characters?

I would say I write lesbian fiction. There are tropes and conventions in the genre that I think Snowbound and Desolation Point make use of. Even though Snowbound wasn’t written for publication, I knew of BSB and LesFic in general and I’d read a lot of online fic, so their influence was there in the background.

Did you know right from the start that you wanted to write this kind of novel?

With Snowbound, I knew what kind of story I wanted to write, but I genuinely wrote it for an audience of one, hence setting it close to home (no research necessary!) and focussing on a medical scenario (not much research necessary). It was only after BSB contracted it that I thought, “Bugger, better go and check some of this stuff out.”

Does it make a difference to be a British and/or a European author?

It definitely makes a difference. Snowbound wears its Englishness on its sleeve. It’s set just down the road from me and it’s chockfull of northern colloquialisms, cups of tea and local foodstuffs. Its police are armed with nothing but batons and a sense of humour, and the plot revolves around that good old-fashioned British obsession: a spell of terrible weather. When I sent it to an American publisher, I was sure it would be rejected for being too damn English, but they wanted it and they kept it exactly as it was, and I love them very much for that.

Desolation Point is a different kettle of fish in that it takes place in the USA, but I knew I wanted to play with the UK/US cultural divide and I had already chosen a mixed pairing for my central characters. While Alex is from Boston, Sarah’s from up here near Manchester, so I could still write a story where someone got to say “bloody hell-fire” and “bollocks”, which suits me just fine.

How did you conceive the plot for Desolation Point?

To be honest, I pinched its main premise from one of my own fics. In my fic, someone runs the lead characters off the road and then spends the night hunting them down. At its most basic level, Desolation Point grew out of that. I had the initial parallel scenes – Alex’s assault and Sarah’s car crash – buzzing around in my head when I was finishing the edits on Snowbound, so I had a good idea of what was going to shape the characters. At first I thought about having a flood trap Sarah and Alex in the park, but I couldn’t make that work, so I sent Sarah up a mountain instead, set the storm against her and then had her stumbling across the main villain, which established the chase element. I had the main beats of the plot sketched out from the beginning, but I’m useless at sticking to a plan, so things remained very fluid throughout.

Did you draw your inspiration for the main characters in Desolation Point from real life? Or did you totally invent them?

I invented them from scratch, but there are odds and sods in the dialogue or descriptions that have come from walks my partner and I have done. We play the “I love my love with an A…” game when we’re knackered and trying to get back home. Sarah talks a lot like me and I too have to drink my tea while it’s hot enough to burn my throat, but otherwise she’s her own character.

In both Snowbound and Desolation Point the setting seems to be an integral part of the story. Could they have been set in another environment? Why did you choose the US as the setting for your second novel?

I regularly walk in the Peak District, which meant I could describe it with confidence in Snowbound. Also, I doubt there are many LesFics set there, so the story has the advantage of novelty in its location as well as in its vernacular dialogue and general Englishness. It was staunchly northern English as well – I’m a proud northerner – and setting it elsewhere would necessarily have diminished that, which would have been a shame.

I have no personal attachment to the North Cascades but, having spent a year working on Desolation Point, I couldn’t envision that being relocated either. The title would have to be changed, for a start, and I’m rubbish with titles. I’ve never been to that particular part of the States, but I did so much research trying to get everything right that I think I could find my way up Desolation Peak blindfolded!

I agonised about Desolation Point’s location before starting it. I didn’t want people to assume I’d chosen America just to broaden my audience (BSB’s readership is primarily American); in fact, I wondered whether I was shooting myself in the foot by not sticking to the English setting from which a lot of Snowbound’s appeal stemmed. Ultimately, though, I needed a couple of things to make the plot in Desolation Point work: one of my lead characters had to be proficient with a gun, and the location had to be expansive enough to get my central pair well and truly lost. I considered the Scottish Highlands and the Peak and Lake Districts over here but they just weren’t remote enough, so I decided to move things across the pond. That also solved the gun problem – as an American ex-police officer, Alex would know her way around a firearm.

Some readers might be a bit put off by the violence displayed in both books. Why did you think it was necessary to include details and descriptions?

Both stories have involved some genuinely nasty characters and I really do believe that if you’re going to have violence in your plot then it should hurt and it should have consequences. I suspect a lot of that stems from my day job, where I see the effects of brutality and trauma on an all-too regular basis. I’ve always tried to write realistically; the women in my novels are not super-humans, just normal people who get caught up in horrific circumstances, and they do things to survive that they’d never imagined themselves doing. If they get hurt, it takes them a while to get up again; and – because I don’t want to write cartoonish, toothless villains either – they do tend to get hurt. I never want to make the violence gratuitous, but nor do I want to shy away from the details or the after-effects. I hate books where a character gets assaulted in one scene and shows no sign of it in the next; anyone who writes like that has never sat opposite an assault victim and listened to them cry or tried to stop them bleeding.

I hope there’s enough humour and lighter moments scattered through the books to counteract their more brutal aspects, though I appreciate that the violence may be too strong for some people’s taste.

Between Snowbound and Desolation Point do you have a favourite character? Which one and why?

Oh, that’s a difficult one! I do have a bit of a soft spot for Sarah. She comes into her own in the latter stages of Desolation Point and she was a real darling to write. Having said that, most of the fun came from having her bounce off Alex, so they sort of come in a pair. Can I have them both? I’m having them both.

How has Desolation Point been welcomed so far?

So far, so good. I’ve had a lot of positive feedback and a fair few people telling me they’re looking forward to the sequel, which is a relief! It’s still early days and I know it’s inevitable that there are folks who won’t like it, possibly for some of the reasons I’ve already mentioned, but the majority of people I’ve heard from seem to have enjoyed the heck out of it.

Are you currently working on a new book? Would you mind telling us a little about it?

I finished Tumbledown, the follow-up to Desolation Point, in the year between Snowbound and Desolation Point’s publication dates. It’s my first shot at an all-out twisty thriller and is earmarked for release in 2014. Until the edits for that come back, I’m working on a new story set in England (in the Peak District, again) which is a sort of thriller-mystery in which the two main characters are long-time friends and occasional lovers. I thought it’d be interesting to explore an established friendship rather than the stereotypical two strangers falling rapidly in love. At the moment, its working title (courtesy of my partner) is Aye Up: It’s a New Story! and I have no idea whether it’ll ever reach publication. I’ve got about another 60,000 words before I start worrying about that!

Thank you Cari for your availability and your time!

NB: Both novels have e-book Kindle editions

Carol reviews Finding Bluefield by Elan Barnehama

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Danika Ellis

Finding Bluefield by Elan Barnehama

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books

Genre: Fiction

Overview from Amazon:

“When Barbara Phillips arrives in Bluefield, Virginia, to begin her medical residency, she thinks she is headed for an uneventful few years filled with work in an obscure little town where no one knows her—which is exactly what she wants.

Everything changes when she enters Nicky’s diner and begins a journey that will last a lifetime as she falls in love against her better judgment and best-laid plans. The free-spirited Nicky later attends the 1963 March on Washington and impulsively and anonymously sleeps with a man in hopes of getting pregnant and starting a family with Barbara. When Nicky gives birth to Paul, her sister steps in to adopt Paul for his own “protection.”

Nicky, Barbara, and Paul escape Bluefield and make a life in upstate New York, only returning to Bluefield years later upon hearing of the death of Nicky’s sister. As their journey comes full circle, Barbara, Paul, and Nicky find their return to Bluefield is the catalyst for facing family secrets and forging family ties.”

Review: 3 out of 5 stars

This story takes place between 1960 and 1983 and follows the lives of Nicky and Barbara. The story is interesting especially as you place it into historical context and realize how much more difficult it was to be in a same sex relationship in the 60’s and 70’s and the extent that they had to hide their relationship. Having said that there were definitely times where I couldn’t fathom some of the decisions that Nicky would make just assuming that everything would be wonderful. She’s not just wearing rose colored glasses she has an entire rose colored bubble around her. I was disappointed in the lack of ramifications from several of these decisions. Especially the one where Nicky sleeps with a stranger because she’s always wanted a child. I just couldn’t relate to Barbara’s non-response to (a) being cheated on and (b) Nicky making such a life altering decision for both of them… without any input from Barbara.

Half way through the story, I realized that although I couldn’t relate to Nicky’s decision making process the story itself was interesting in that it portrays two women living their lives like any other couple and that not all relationships look the same.

Jordan reviews Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Danika Ellis

Far too many people often forget the power of a story. Stories change worlds, or particularly they shape worlds, and people. If you don’t believe me, just look at how much Disney has managed to shape the mentality around romance and love for many people of the current generation. And luckily it isn’t only Disney that understands this concept. Emma Donoghue, and her collection of thirteen fairy tales Kissing the Witch, understands the power of a story, such as the one that is weaved through these tales.

It all starts with the Tale of a Shoe and Cinderella and ends with the Tale of a Kiss and a Witch, but these aren’t just thirteen separate fairy tales with a touch of real and positive female relationships. Each one of these tales, from the shoe to the kiss, is threaded together by the women in the stories. In a way this novel actually reminds me of a method that the L Word had used for its third season, interlocking various women through the past and present by bringing up a story at the beginning of each episode and moving from one woman (or guy) to the next. But Kissing the Witch does it with stories instead of events and does it in a way that proves there is always another chapter beyond the happily ever after.

We start this story with a young girl being whisked to a ball after she asked to go. And although she dances with the prince and expects to go with him, things change and instead she finds herself tossing her shoes aside and finding the woman who had brought her to the ball. It doesn’t end there, though: as they are going off together, we are led right into another story and this one is about the godmother before she was off bringing girls to balls. And each story continues one after another, based on one of the characters in the previous one. It eventually got to the point, half way through that I was turning it into a game trying to figure out who would be the next person to tell their story and what tale it might be, especially since it isn’t always clear which tale is a retelling of what!

Like most fairy tale retellings, though, you’d be able to recognize many of these stories if you knew another version of the tale. You’ll find Beauty and Beast, Donkeyskin, Rapunzel, Snow White, and even the Little Mermaid. Now you might also be surprised to find that not all of the stories in this book are lesbian retellings, but they do all have a common mentality.

They are simply stories focused on the power of relationships between women: all relationships. One is the friendship shown between two women (The Tale of the Skin), another focuses on a step mother and her step daughter (The Tale of the Apple), or even a keeper who becomes someone else for the girl she keeps (The Tale of the Hair). Regardless each one of these stories, sensual or supportive, shows the positive sides of relationships that women can share, and if this doesn’t seem like such an interesting and revolutionary idea, then you haven’t read enough fairy tales.

Often times the tales of old try to pit women against women, with the classic step mother and step sisters always being terrible to the girl in cinders, or the witch and queen that curses the young and fair girl that happens to be more beautiful. It is a common occurrence and one of the more unfortunate themes rampant in fairy tales. Instead, Emma Donoghue put the power back in women’s hands with these stories. Each one was not only interesting in the method of not focusing on the prince or husband but in some cases exciting to find out what happens next even though they were already known tales.

It’s usually hard for me to pick favorites with fairy tales, because I find many of them amusing, but in this case I think the ‘Tale of the Hair’ won out finally, due to some blind elements and an interesting narration that focused more on sounds that really got me thinking, and such a well done spin involving the prince in the story.

However, that is just from the retellings, my absolute favorite from this set was actually the last one, told by a witch narrator we know by no other name, ‘The Tale of the Kiss’. As far as I can tell, this was not a fairy tale retelling, but I could be wrong and if I am, I would love to see the original story it was based on. Regardless, this one had a bit more power behind it, possibly because it was original from the author, but it had an interesting focus on the power that people give to each other and to themselves, and most of all it had an open ending. What do I mean?

Well, the thirteen stories don’t just end with The Tale of the Kiss. Much in the same way all the previous stories before it led to a new tale being discussed by one of the characters, this one ends with a direct slant toward the reader continuing the story, essentially indirectly asking the reader what they will do with the knowledge of the stories they just read. I found it a brilliant ending for a collection of interlinked pieces and it really gives me an idea about creating a challenge to have everyone continue the ‘Kissing the Witch’ by creating the next story and the next, and the next.

Anyway, the interconnectivity of this novel was really what set this one majorly apart from other ones I’ve read and gave each tale a little more power. Of course, not all of the pieces were perfect, I actually didn’t particularly care for ‘The Tale of the Bird’ and I had trouble keeping up with ‘The Tale of the Cottage’ because of the narrator’s voice through it, but overall I still enjoyed those stories, they just fell lower on my memorability of them than the others.

Other than that, there really isn’t much of anything to say bad about these fairy tales. The writing style was wonderful and makes me glad I wrote my fairy tale rewritings in first person narrative too and the stories most of all had something to say. You could almost say there was a hidden lesson in each of them, with the last one having a not-so-hidden lesson. Regardless, this is one novel I’d recommend to really anyone, with a particular focus on showing people how it is very possible to portray women with meaningful and positive relationships (and not drama filled ones), lesbian or not, and still have a story to tell.

Karelia Stetz-Waters reviews Looking Through Windows by Caren Werlinger

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Danika Ellis

Reading romance novels is bad for you. I read that in graduate school. Actually, I read a whole book to that effect. (Don’t worry. I love the genre. This isn’t a polemic.) To be fair, the study I read looked at heterosexual women. Nonetheless, one can draw some comparisons.

The classic romance novel pairs two flawlessly beautiful people in an exotic setting where, despite the fact that they are ostensibly wrong for each other, they have sex so fantastic it changes the PH of their blood. They get up in each other’s business starting on page twenty, then enjoy 300 pages of erotic courtship in which no one ever has to clean the sink trap, go to the doctor, or figure out what the cat has disemboweled on the back porch. No wonder readers’ lives pale by comparison.

Until now.

Looking Through Windows by Caren Werlinger tells the story of Emily, a young teaching assistant grieving the death of her girlfriend, and Ann, a Peace Corp volunteer, finally back in the United States and wondering why heterosexual relationships leave her unfulfilled. The story charts their blossoming friendship and love and the challenges placed in the way of their relationship.

I knew Looking Through Windows was not going to be a standard romance when Ann and Emily admit their mutual attraction and then decide not to act on it because neither of them is emotionally ready.

What? No! I thought. They are supposed to melt into a pool of viscous lust, not make an emotionally intelligent choice that honors their friendship and supports the possibility of a deeper, healthier relationship in the future.

Therein lies the strength of Werlinger’s book. This isn’t escapist fiction. This is a realistic portrayal of – surprise! – mature love. This is not to say the book is without drama. Actually, it has a lot more than I expected given the leisurely pace of the first half of the story.

[spoiler, highlight to read] When Emily loses Ann (temporarily) and then loses her leg to cancer, my heart wrenched. When Ann sees Emily in the hospital – emaciated from chemo, bald, amputated, and vomiting in a basin – there is no way to mistake this for a Harlequin Romance. That’s a good thing. [end spoiler]

Unlike the classic romance that – studies show – leaves the reader wondering why don’t I live in Barbados and have abs like sculpted granite? Looking Through Windows will make the reader appreciate the things that truly make for good relationships. I finished the book and hugged my wife, thankful for our beautiful life that does not happen in Barbados and does involve cleaning the sink trap and identifying the bottom half of whatever it was the cat killed on the porch. Two thumbs up!

Now, I wouldn’t be true to my profession, if I did not offer a little constructive criticism. Perhaps because Werlinger’s book was a realistic portrait of life, not a fantasy, some parts move slowly. Unlike the average romance, the heroines in Looking Through Windows have jobs, exams, friends, families, landlords, chores, and conversations with people who are only tangentially related to the romantic storyline. On the flip side, when tragedy strikes, it strikes quickly and unexpectedly (rather like it does in real life), giving the second half of the book a much different feel than the first.

Incidentally, one of the really nice features of this book is the cast of sympathetic supporting characters. There are bad guys, but there are also a lot of kind people who try their best. It makes Looking Through Windows a very hopeful story, even as it deals with some difficult themes.

If you are looking for the quintessential romance novel, complete with butch-femme sports-bodice ripping, this is not it. If you are looking for a good drama that makes you hold your own loved ones a little closer, I recommend Looking Through Windows. Buy it for that friend who is always messing up her love life. There is a lot to learn here.

I am also pleased to report that Caren Werlinger’s long anticipated novel In This Small Spot is soon to be released by Corgyn Publishing. I look forward to following Werlinger’s career as she definitely has a lot to offer the lesbian community.

By Karelia Stetz-Waters
www.kareliastetzwaters.com

Link Round Up: April 30 – May 8

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Danika Ellis

Autostraddle posted Lez Liberty Lit #19: Strong Coffee, Stronger Bourbon and Mariel Cove: A Masturbation Month One-Handed-Read Review and Interview.

Bonjour, Cass! posted Queer Library: New Additions.

Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian posted Rachel Rose’s Song & Spectacle Wins the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry; Also, Feelings about Alison Bechdel and Jeanettte Winterson.

The June Mazer Lesbian Archives posted a quick tour of the archives.

Lambda Literary posted New in May: Dan Savage, Michelle Tea, Amber Dawn, and Martin Duberman and Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, 10th Anniversary Edition.

Lesfic Insomniac posted Selecting your next Lesbian Fiction Book accurately!

Over the Rainbow Books (of the American Library Association) posted OTR April 2013 Nominations.

Queer Books Please posted Episode 16 – Apocalypse books!

The Rainbow Project (of the American Library Association) posted 2014 Nominations: And we begin with 8 titles.

Sistahs On the Shelf Promo Blog posted SOTS Books 2 Check Out – May 2013.

UK Lesbian Fiction posted about several UK queer lit festivals and Special Feature: 4th Annual Bold Strokes Book UK Festival, by Victoria Oldham.

Alison Bechdel posted an update on her upcoming events.

Ivan Coyote was interviewed at Xtra! and written about at Writers Festival (“Nipple Clamps and Pot-Holders: Shifting identities with Ivan E. Coyote and Tagralik Partridge”).

Sarah Diemer posted Aphrodite Has a Daughter, a Free YA Short Story — Part of Project Unicorn (A Lesbian YA Extravaganza)

Sassafras Lowrey won the Lambda Literary 2013 Emerging Writer Award.

Lynette Mae posted Owning Your Authentic Voice.

Val McDermid will be doing a book signing at the new Kirkaldy Library on June 8.

The As The World Dies series by Rhiannon Frater was reviewed at Queer Books Please.

Backwards to Oregon by Jae was reviewed and discussed by Nikki and Cheri at C-Spot Reviews.

Incidental Music by Lydia Perović was reviewed by Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian.

The End of San Francisco by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Beyond Innocence by Carsen Taite was reviewed at Out In Print Queer Book Review.

Mermaid in Chelsea Creek by Michelle Tea was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Fear in the Sunlight by Nicola Upson was reviewed at Unabridged Chick.

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

This post has the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee.

Karelia Stetz-Waters reviews Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Danika Ellis

I was somewhat disappointed to learn that my all-time favorite lesbian writer had released a new memoir. That’s not my usual reaction to book releases. It’s just that Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal promised to cover approximately the same time period as her first memoir, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Why Be Happy also promised to set the record straight about what was and was not true in Oranges.

To be fair, Winterson explains in Why Be Happy that Oranges is not a memoir. It is a novel about a girl named Jeanette who has a childhood very, very similar to Winterson’s. In graduate school, I would have jumped on the postmodern implications of this statement. In the real world, I just call that a memoir with embellishments.

Either way, I loved Oranges. I read it when I was sixteen, the year I came out. It was the first lesbian book I read. It made me want to become a writer. I did not want Winterson to set the record straight and tell us, as she does, that her life sucked a little bit more than it did in Oranges.

Moreover, the second half of Why Be Happy is about how Winterson’s unhappy childhood continued to haunt and hurt her in adulthood. I wanted to think that Winterson, my hero, my role model, had come farther in her emotional life. Almost thirty years after Oranges, she was still writing about what a cold woman her mother was. I was mad. I wanted something different.

Still, the psychologists say that to be truly angry at someone, you have to truly love them.

I love Jeanette Winterson’s writing. I love her as much now as I did at sixteen. I love Why Be Happy as much as I love Oranges.

It’s her sentences. Lots of writers have good plots or clever premises. No one can craft a sentence like Winterson. It’s not that they are particularly long, complex, or laden with adjectives. Just the opposite. Her sentences are so clear, so sharp, so cold, like diamond stars hung in the darkness of the postmodern cosmos, their brightness a conversation with the unspoken space that surrounds them.

She is that good.

Perhaps the price is her happiness. The authorial voice in Why Be Happy is hopeful. She is striving. She is quick to say that she always embraces life. However she is still tormented. Pain and loss cling to every page. It is that intensity that I loved at sixteen. It’s that intensity that I love in Why Be Happy.

It’s the reason why Winterson can do what no one should attempt: two memoirs about the same story. I was lucky to get to read these books as they should be read. One at fifteen when one needs heroes. One at nearly 40 when one knows what heroes really look like.

By Karelia Stetz-Waters
www.kareliastetzwaters.com

Danika reviews Body Geographic by Barrie Jean Borich

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Danika Ellis

This is a very smart book. Sometimes I open a book and immediately realize that this has been carefully crafted and very well-written, which, oddly, can also mean that it may be a less instantly enjoyable book: it may take some time and energy to read as well as to write. Body Geographic is definitely one of those books. It is a memoir that uses maps and migration as metaphor in piecing together Borich’s life. There are occasional maps interspersed with the text, and sections are labelled things like “Inset of Bodies so Real” and “First is the Map of Withstanding”. Borich and her families’ stories are told in fragments like this, not in a linear order.

I got the feeling like I was getting snapshots of people: evocative, but not even close to the full story. As Borich circles back to the same people or time periods, more layers get added to these brief impressions, but I still didn’t feel like I really knew these people. One example that I kept thinking about was Linnea. Linnea is Borich’s wife of two decades, but we do not really get a full conversation between them in the whole book. Linnea only speaks a handful of times. It’s as if she is lightly sketched, though more detail does get added later. I’m used to memoirs where I feel immersed in the “characters”, in their personalities, but there seemed to be a distance between the people in Body Geographic and the reader.

I may not be the ideal reader of Body Geographic: I am ridiculously, embarrassingly bad at geography, and I am not a visual person. I definitely don’t think in maps. I did find the metaphor a very interesting one, especially weaving the stories of her ancestors’ migrations and her own migration between her two home cities (Minneapolis and Chicago), but I am sure that anyone who has a better appreciation of maps and geography would enjoy it even more.

This is an extremely well-written memoir that was obviously very carefully put together, and I would recommend that it be read slowly, to really savor the writing and the style of it. It is surprisingly easy to read, but the fragmentation does make it harder to really sink into the story. This is a book that I appreciated the skill of, but didn’t necessarily feel emotionally invested in.

A warning, though: although Body Geographic seems to try to be positive while mentioning trans people, Borich uses the terms “biological woman” and “tr*nny”. Also, most of these references are towards trans women sex workers. I know that most of this book takes place during the 60s and 70s, but that’s still not okay.

If you’ve read Body Geographic, let me know what you thought of it in the comments!

Lena reviews Occasions of Sin by Elena Graf

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Danika Ellis

Occasions of Sin, Elena Graf’s historical romance, presents an engaging and entertaining journey through the convents and hospitals of Weimar Germany. The novel opens with Margarethe von Stahle, a German countess arriving at the convent her family has patronized for several centuries. We quickly learn that in addition to being a countess, Margarethe is also a lauded surgeon and head of surgery at a hospital in Berlin. She’s arrived at the convent to select a new Head Nurse from the nuns at the convent. The best candidate, a mysterious nun named Sister Augustine, provides Margarethe with as many questions as answers. The two return to Berlin and become close friends as Margarethe attempts to discover the secrets of Sister Augustine’s past and reconcile with her growing attraction to a woman under vow.

From there the novel is a sprawling trek across Europe in the 1930s, the social hierarchy of the Germany aristocracy, and the centuries-old secrets of a cloistered sect of nuns. It is a purely conventional historical romance saved by a strong and engaging narrative voice. Margarethe, who’s voice takes us through the first section of the book, is an interesting and well-rounded character. Graf does a nice job of giving a character with idealized circumstances a flawed and believable voice, though at times she does feel a bit too perfect. Curiously, Sister Augustine, who narrates later sections, is a weaker character, but her sections remain engaging in the context of the book. These voices help the rather unsurprising plot remain a pleasant read. Instead of boredom at its predictability, these narrators and their experiences endow the events of the story with new layers and charm.

Graf should also be applauded for the thorough creation of her world. The research makes the reading experience feel immersive and inhabits both the style of the narrative passages and the dialogue, a rare treat these days. Graf also has the gift of providing enough information about topics such as pre-war German politics and the convent system to be interesting and necessary for the plot without getting carried away. That being said, it was surprising that the looming presence of World War II, or the shadows of World War I, didn’t play a larger role in the book. Except for a couple of instances, it was easy to forget that just years after the events of the novel, its entire world would be irrevocably changed. While this did drive home the isolation of Margarethe’s privileged world, one couldn’t help but read excepting the Nazi Party to burst in and spoil everything.

However, the threats of the next decade stay firmly in the future and this charming tale of nuns, surgery and German aristocracy is a pleasant and addicting read.

The Lesbrary

Lesbian and Bi Book News and Reviews

Month: May 2013