Month: November 2014

Danika reviews The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

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PayingGuestsSarah Waters is my favourite author, with Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith tied as my all-time favourite books. When I discovered her books, she had already published four novels, which I rapidly devoured. In 2010 she released another book, The Little Stranger, which I enjoyed, but was less eager to get my hands on because it was her first novel with no lesbian content. So ever since I heard about The Paying Guests being released I’ve been chomping at the bit for a chance to read a brand new (lesbian) Sarah Waters novel. It’s one of the very few books that I immediately bought the day it was released. And then, oddly, it sat on my shelf for about a month. My excitement to read it has transformed into a kind of dread. I haven’t read a Sarah Waters book for 4 years: longer than that since I read a lesbian book of hers, which was back when I was a teenager. What if it wasn’t as good as the others? What if I don’t like her writing as much as I used to and it’s not like I remember?

So I went into The Paying Guests with a lot of expectation, though very little knowledge of the plot. I knew it was set in 1920s London, and that involved a woman who takes in a young couple as lodgers, and that there was lesbian content. As I started to read, I relaxed a little. Sarah Waters has a skill of establishing place and mood, and I was soon submerged in the setting, which is different than the more freewheeling flapper stories that I’ve previously read about set in this time period. For Frances, the main character, the Victorian era isn’t that far in the past. I also instantly loved Frances, who struggles to take care of a huge house as well as her aging mother, but still remembers her life when she wasn’t so tied down. The paragraph were Frances first charmed me was

There were spells of restlessness now and again; but any life had those. There were longings, there were desires… But they were physical matters mostly, and she had no last-century inhibitions about dealing with that sort of thing. It was amazing, in fact, she reflected, as she repositioned her mat and bucket and started on a new stretch of tile, it was astonishing how satisfactorily the business could be taken care of, even in the middle of the day, even with her mother in the house, simply by slipping up to her bedroom for an odd few minutes, perhaps as a break between peeling parsnips or while waiting for dough to rise–

A movement in the turn of the staircase made her start. She had forgotten all about her lodgers. Now she looked up through the banisters to Mrs Barber just coming uncertainly down.

She felt herself blush, as if caught out.

It’s interesting how the feel of the time period seems to straddle the line between historical and modern, which was interesting to compare to Waters’s previous books. I found myself thinking that I would love to read them in order of the time period in which each book is set, because she seems to convey the subtle attitude changes through the decades so well.

I enjoyed the romance as well, which seemed natural and compelling, though occasionally verging on the soap operatic. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was the overall tone to the book, which is fairly bleak. It feels similar to Affinity in that way. Most of the book revolves around an event that happens about a third of the way through the book, and because I wasn’t expecting that to be the focus, I was thrown. Even after finishing the book a couple of days ago, I still feel like I’m processing it. It is an excellent book, which definitely lives up to her previous books, but it felt emotionally jarring to me, which is probably because I wasn’t expecting it to be so dark. I would still recommend this one, but I wouldn’t start here as your first Sarah Waters novel.

The rest of my thoughts are spoilers. Highlight to read. I definitely wasn’t expecting The Paying Guests to get so bleak. The description of falling in love is sweet, if realistically syrupy. But the descriptions of falling out of love, of finding yourself hating the person you love, of finding yourself becoming someone you never thought you would be–they were absolutely cutting. Sarah Waters doesn’t just understand setting, she really knows how to portray tangled, messy human emotions. And that–more than the murder, more than the trials–was what horrified me in The Paying Guests. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but I definitely found myself on Lillian’s side more than Frances’s. Frances lashing out at Lillian, beginning to treat her in ways reminiscent of Leonard, it inspired a visceral disgust in me. At the same time, though, I could all too easily understand why Frances was acting the way she was, and could relate in ways that I didn’t want to.

I thought that the ending would really determine what I thought of the book overall. I couldn’t see how Waters could possibly write an ending that was emotionally satisfying, but she managed to find pretty much the only ending that could have worked. It’s more bitter than sweet, but there’s still an element of hope, and maybe some redemption. It didn’t erase the gut reaction I had to the story, though, which I feel like I’m still carrying around. I wasn’t sure how to rate this book after I read it, because it seems unfair to mark it down for being too emotionally affecting, but I also don’t know how to look at it objectively. In the end, I have to think that anything that evokes this kind of response has to be recognized, at the very least, as incredibly skilled. If you feel like having you heart very slowly torn out, pick up The Paying Guests.

Danielle Ferriola reviews Kicked Out edited by Sassafras Lowrey

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“When I was kicked out for the final time at seventeen, the first thing I did –after finding somewhere to sleep for a few days –was to go to the library. I scanned each spine and in desperation began pulling books off the shelves, running fingers over tables of contents and skimming introductions. This was the first time a library had failed me. I needed a book about how to live through this more than I needed to know I had somewhere to stay, to know I had a way to get to school or to know what I would have for dinner. I needed a book to prove to me that survival was possible” (pp. 13-14).

Sassafras Lowrey begins Kicked Out by emphasizing how necessary it is to have stories of survival and hope for LGBTQ homeless youth. Kicked Out does just that. Intertwined with deeply emotional stories and notes from US organizations that dedicate themselves to assisting queer and transgender youth, this anthology delivers a sincere message of hope. What I really appreciate about Lowrey’s selection of stories is the realness of every individual; each story is heartbreakingly honest and unique. There are a variety of voices represented in Kicked Out from a multitude of racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds that provides a wide array of experiences for readers. Another driving theme in the youths’ stories was the formation of a new family, an extended family that really understood what the youth were dealing with. These families were formed by fellow LGBTQ youth on the street, mentors in their lives, and people outside of their given family who caringly opened up their home.

It took me a long time to read Kicked Out. I wanted the stories to sink themselves into my skin and not be dismissing thoughts. This anthology deserves to be read in time and celebrated for the strengths of the individuals to make it through. Not everyone is lucky –friends have been lost along the way and some families have never accepted their children. As I finished Kicked Out, I carry with me the urgency for families to lovingly accept their children regardless of their sexual or gender identity, the need for more funding and training for all homeless shelters to adequately care for LGBTQ youth, and for communities and systems of power to take action in ending homelessness.

Danika reviews Being Emily by Rachel Gold

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I feel very conflicted about this book. When I first heard about it, I was really excited to read it, because it is the first young adult book with a trans girl narrator, plus the main character is a lesbian. There are very few trans lesbian books, so they also get bumped up my reading list. When I heard that the author is cis, I was a little apprehensive, which I always am when reading a book about a minority identity that the author doesn’t share. Then when I initially read it, I was disappointed. Although it was compelling, I had a lot of issues with it, particularly the vocabulary used (which may be regional, but I haven’t heard anyone ever refer to themselves as a “survivor of transsexualism”, and the word “transsexual” itself I very rarely hear), and the ample amount of space given to Emily’s girlfriend’s initial transphobic response to Emily coming out. After that, I Rachel Gold’s second novel, Just Girls, fully expecting to dislike it. Instead, I loved it. I then discovered tons of rave reviews of Being Emily from all over, including many reviews by trans women themselves, and found out that there were many trans women beta readers who worked with Rachel Gold in shaping Being Emily. As a cisgender person, I obviously make no claim to the authenticity of a depiction of the experience of being trans.

So, I feel muddled about Being Emily. (Much more so now, because I put off reviewing Being Emily due to my ambivalence about it, and then discovered that my glitchy Kobo had helpfully erased all of my extensive highlighting and notes that I took while reading it.) Although I absolutely give precedence to trans women’s reviews of this book, I’ll share my experience with it anyways, in case it’s helpful to anyone.

One of the first things that struck me about the novel was that I wasn’t sure who it was aimed at. Almost half of the book is from the perspective of Claire, Emily’s girlfriend, who at first reacts pretty badly to Emily’s coming out. We read pages of her transphobic tirades complete with religious justification and sketchy ideas of biological truths before she comes around. This may be accurate to many people’s experience, but I cringed reading it, and I can’t imagine slogging through that as someone coming to terms with their own gender identity.

It’s also quite bleak, and again, though it may be realistic for many people for their parents to react badly and for the coming out process to be negative, as a personal preference that’s not the world I want to escape to in a book. Again, this is completely personal, but I have long ago gotten tired of reading lesbian YA that is focused on how awful it is to come out. And maybe it’s unfair to bring that into reading a trans narrative, where there are so few stories at the moment, and where the reality is bleaker than the average cis lesbian experience.

Another element that I personally didn’t enjoy was Claire’s Christianity being focused on quite a bit in her sections. One detail I did enjoy was the freedom that Emily experiences in gaming/the internet, especially World of Warcraft. This is explored more in Just Girls, and I liked it even more there.

I learned from the author that Being Emily was first drafted ten years ago, which explains some of the outdated terms. I’m still not sure how to think about this one. Although I’ve lost all my notes, I remember highlighting many of Claire’s passages, being horrified at her callousness, and questioning some other lines for not seeming realistic to how I’ve heard trans people present themselves, but at the same time, I’ve read multiple trans women’s positive reviews of this title, and no negative reviews by trans people, so I have to chalk it up to my own preferences at least in part. I did absolutely love Just Girls, though, and recommend that one wholeheartedly.

Danika reviews Twixt by Sarah Diemer

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Sarah Diemer is an author that I am pretty familiar with from her online presence, but I’ve only read one book by her, The Dark Wife. One of my favourite Booktubers, Jessie Quinn from Cup of Books, reviewed Twixt pretty positively and recommended it as an October read, so I figured it would be a good one to pick up during Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon. (Now that all the links are out of the way…)

Twixt is a sort of dystopic fantasy young adult book. It drops you immediately into this world of Sleepers and Snatchers, a walled in town where monsters swoop in and snatch people who try to leave, a place where hair is bartered like money and memories are drugs. It’s overwhelming at first, and I spent most of the novella trying to get my bearings. This is a story that I feel like is based around the world and setting. Although the characters are interesting, I didn’t feel like they were fully realized. I also appreciated a lesbian romance in this setting, but because I didn’t feel connected to the characters, I wasn’t invested in the romance, either.

Because the setting is so unique, the whole time I was reading it I thought that the ending/explanation would really determine how I felt about the novella as a whole. The explanation is satisfying in that it is fittingly odd, and does make sense for the story, but afterward I felt like some elements were unnecessary (spoiler, highlight to read: specifically the doubling of the sixers–the two-as-one thing seemed unexplained and unneeded. Also some details like the rivalry between the houses felt superfluous).

Overall, I found the story interesting and intriguing, but I wanted more from it: more development of the characters and more detail of the setting. I would have liked to see this fleshed out into a novel-length work. It feels like the bare bones of a richer, more thorough narrative. But this may just be my own experience. In addition to Jessie’s review, also check out Katie’s very positive review at the Lesbrary.

Elinor reviews Down On the Other Street by Jennifer Cie

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This short story collection focuses primarily on bisexual characters, and all but one of the stories star a bisexual woman. Bi and pansexual women often get short shrift as characters, and it was great to read about bi women as main characters. The women in Cie’s stories were portrayed as everything from unapologetic to in love to angry to vulnerable, and above all, completely human. Just five stories long, and some of them quite short, this book is a quick read. It’s also affecting. Cie is an excellent writer with a lovely command of language. This self-published book does have a handful of typos, and my copy had a formatting error that put one page in the wrong story, which distracts slightly from the excellent quality of the work.

Four of the stories are written to a “you,” casting the reader in a role important to the narrator. I found this technique confusing in the brief, furious story, “F&F.” The vignette “The Five: Time With Red Freckles” pulled it off better, though I wished the story were a little longer and included more background information. “Intellectuals Are Fools,” a story documenting every person the narrator had ever kissed and retelling the tales to a former caretaker, reminded me a little of a Thought Catalogue article circa 2012. (That can be good or bad depending on your preferences). The technique worked best in the opening story “The Photo.” This moving relationship story makes the reader the beloved, and is the only story with a male narrator. By the end of “The Photo,” I had tears in my eyes. It managed to be touching without being cloying, and to be sweet while still remaining honest.

The final story, “The Blue Bullet,” about an extra marital, interracial relationship in the late 1930s and early 1940s, was the longest and most fully realized. I dare you to read it without having your heartbroken at least a little. Though many of the characters in this collection are searching for acceptance of their whole selves, the protagonist in this tale stands firm in her own identity, refusing to be defined by anyone else. The story was complete, but I found myself wishing it were a novel so I could dive deeper in the story.

I highly recommend this short story collection. It’s beautifully written, emotionally engaging, and puts bisexual women center stage. I’m also going to be on the look out for more from Jennifer Cie. She’s a writer worth reading.

Link Round Up: Oct 30 – Nov 12

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Gravitybetweenus   wishbone   dontbangthebarista

AfterEllen posted 8 Lesbian Romance Novels That Will Get You Hooked on the Genre.

Autostraddle posted Lez Liberty Lit #58: We Have Always Lived In The Bookshelf.

Lambda Literary posted

Queer Romance Month posted Queer/Were: L.L. Raand’s Paranormal Romances by Ruth Sternglantz and Tragedy and Lesbian Love by Sarah Brooks.

Karin Kallmaker posted No Rage Stalking Here – Why I Welcome Critical Reviews.

aliceandfreda  badfeminist   tellmeagain

Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder In Memphis by Alexis Coe was reviewed at AfterEllen.

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay was reviewed at Bisexual Books.

The Lightkeeper’s Wife by Sarah Anne Johnson was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Eight Dates by Lori L. Lake was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

deepmerge   100crushes   anatomyofagirlgang

Anatomy of a Girl Gang by Ashley Little was reviewed by Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian.

100 Crushes by Elisha Lim was reviewed at Lindy Reads and Reviews.

Deep Merge by Linda North was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Spheres of Disturbance by Amy Schutzer was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

How To Be Both by Ali Smith was reviewed at Lindy Reads and Reviews.

This post, and all posts at the Lesbrary, have the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s twitter page! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and tumblr.

Elinor reviews Down on the Other Street by Jennifer Cie

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DownOnTheOtherStreet1

This short story collection focuses primarily on bisexual characters, and all but one of the stories star a bisexual woman. Bi and pansexual women often get short shrift as characters, and it was great to read about bi women as main characters. The women in Cie’s stories were portrayed as everything from unapologetic to in love to angry to vulnerable, and above all, completely human. Just five stories long, and some of them quite short, this book is a quick read. It’s also affecting. Cie is an excellent writer with a lovely command of language. This self-published book does have a handful of typos, and my copy had a formatting error that put one page in the wrong story, which distracts slightly from the excellent quality of the work.

Four of the stories are written to a “you,” casting the reader in a role important to the narrator. I found this technique confusing in the brief, furious story, “F&F.” The vignette “The Five: Time With Red Freckles” pulled it off better, though I wished the story were a little longer and included more background information. “Intellectuals Are Fools,” a story documenting every person the narrator had ever kissed and retelling the tales to a former caretaker, reminded me a little of a Thought Catalogue article circa 2012. (That can be good or bad depending on your preferences). The technique worked best in the opening story “The Photo.” This moving relationship story makes the reader the beloved, and is the only story with a male narrator. By the end of “The Photo,” I had tears in my eyes. It managed to be touching without being cloying, and to be sweet while still remaining honest.

The final story, “The Blue Bullet,” about an extra marital, interracial relationship in the late 1930s and early 1940s, was the longest and most fully realized. I dare you to read it without having your heartbroken at least a little. Though many of the characters in this collection are searching for acceptance of their whole selves, the protagonist in this tale stands firm in her own identity, refusing to be defined by anyone else. The story was complete, but I found myself wishing it were a novel so I could dive deeper in the story.

I highly recommend this short story collection. It’s beautifully written, emotionally engaging, and puts bisexual women center stage. I’m also going to be on the look out for more from Jennifer Cie. She’s a writer worth reading.

Danika reviews The Story of Ruth and Eliza // self/help/work/book by Kristen Stone

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The Story of Ruth and Eliza // self/help/work/book by Kristen Stone is a double-sided chapbook, with one side being the novella The Story of Ruth and Eliza and the other side the poem self/help/work/book. The poem is eight pages and has to do with abusive relationships. It’s fragmented, and it’s unclear which segments are connected, but they come together to establish a discomfiting mood, and communicates a lot in a small space. I appreciated how Stone used different techniques throughout the poem, from one run-on look inside someone’s mind to short, stark sentences that stand alone in a section. I read this after The Story of Ruth and Eliza, but I would recommend starting with the poem instead, or reading them in different settings, because Ruth and Eliza overshadowed self/help/work/book some for me.

The Story of Ruth and Eliza is a novella (or lengthy short story?) that revolves around two characters: Ruth, a witch, and Eliza, a nurse. The story is told in many small sections, some several pages long and some only a few lines. Each is titled, and though they are written in prose, they seem to act like poems. Stone definitely bring a poetic element into the story, and so many of the lines seem as carefully chosen and evocative  as poetry. Ruth and Eliza meet in a sign language class, and they are brought closer by working on a group project together. Ruth is lonely, and envies Eliza’s home, which is filled with the presence of her children and husband. They are both drawn to each other, but this isn’t exactly a love story.

I instantly fell in love with Kristen Stone’s voice, and found myself reading out lines to my roommate, though I wouldn’t be able to explain why those sentences struck such a chord, like this paragraph, in the section “Dog Kickers”:

When Ruth sees something cure she immediately imagines someone doing damage to it. Crushing its face. Once in the library she heard a woman holding a tiny baby say to another women, I’ll be so glad when she’s too big to fit in the microwave. Ruth wishes for a child but know she can’t. She would think only of the microwave.

I also actually laughed several times while reading, too, which I don’t usually do, and at lines like: “Emmaline and Eddie both seem to think there would be dinosaurs at the zoo. They had confused the idea of a museum and the idea of a zoo and the film Jumanji.”

Besides the voice, I most enjoyed the backstories given in The Story of Ruth and Eliza. Both of them are really interesting characters, but it was Eliza’s childhood that really stuck with me. These are definitely characters that are going to stick with me, and that’s especially impressive considering how short this story is (61 pages). There’s also an element of magical realism to the story–is Ruth a witch? What does that mean?–which is left up to interpretation, which adds to the interest.

I was definitely impressed with this chapbook. There were a few typos, but only two or three, and other than that it felt polished and thoughtful. I have another book by Kristen Stone, Domestication Handbook, on my TBR pile, and after reading this one I’m really excited to start it.

Jess van Netten reviews Carry the Sky by Kate Gray

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If you enjoy being drawn into a story, so that every breathe you breath is in time with the characters, then Carry The Sky by Kate Gray is a must-read.

I was immediately entranced with the skilful beauty of Gray’s poetic sentence structure. Her freedom from traditional prose constraints allows the independent expressions to grab you by the heart and knock the emotional wind out of you time and time again.

The boarding school based narrative is told from varying perspectives, centring on new rowing coach Taylor Alta and physics teacher Jack Song. Taylor is grieving the loss of the woman she loved, while coming to terms with her school responsibilities. Jack is grappling with his Asian American heritage and its impact on his relationship with a student. Their independent journeys are connected through school expectations and student interactions.

While I’ve simplified the plot for this review, the intricacies of the character self discovery and development provide a feast for any hungry bibliophile.

A significant character, in its own rights, is rowing, described in luscious language usually reserved for the intimacy of a lover. I felt connected to the descriptions, as though they were my own thoughts and this embedded me deep in the narrative.

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Personally, I found Taylor’s voice to be more believable, whether because of my self-association with her character or the author’s semi-biographical input. I often found myself wanting to skip over Jack’s voice to get back to Taylor’s heartache. That in mind, the difference in character tone is a credit to Gray’s talent; they are entirely separate entities orbiting within the same universe.

Carry The Sky is hands down one of the best books I’ve read recently. It captured the intensity of school bullying without victimising the victim. It took hold of my spirit and wouldn’t release me until weeks after the last page.

For those who are similarly enthralled, you will find the interview at the end of the book an insightful read. You can also follow author Kate Gray’s blog.

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Audrey reviews Get Me Through the Night by Emily Ryan

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Joss, Caroline, and Izzy were best friends. At nine, Caroline was abducted. At 17, Izzy was murdered. At 31, Joss is a tough-as-nails waitress at a bar in Chewelah, Washington, and she lives across the trailer park from her mom. Joss is not given to introspection, and the joking banter she engages in at work stands in for intimacy. Despite an almost galling lack of self-knowledge, Joss has a considerable and unwieldy psychic talent, and she reads tarot cards on the side.

An old classmate, Tammy, needs a reading. Weird stuff goes down, Joss passes out, and Tammy bails. Joss is displeased. They rejoin forces, because it seems the dead may not be staying dead. Other players from Joss’s past are called in including Elena, an old high school teacher. Strange happenings abound. Soon circumstances get way beyond anything Joss, Tammy, and Elena could ever control. They call in some assistance, and the cavalry rides in in the form of a lesbian Wiccan couple from Spokane. What’s going on in Chewelah?

This is a series opener. I have been a copy editor for over a decade. And I would pick up (or download) the second title in this series when it’s released, and that’s saying something. Let’s just get this out of the way–this book desperately needed a copy editor. Particularly one with a basic grasp of homonyms.

The book is also seriously uneven, and it sketches in its background and characters in broad strokes. At the beginning this is problematic because there’s really no hook, and it’s a plot-driven novel. Some of the plotting is brilliant. There are some amazing fundamental big ideas. But some of the plotting is clunky. How much abuse and murder can one tiny town hold? But–and stop, stop, just wait–after some hitches and starts, “Get Me Through the Night” takes off. It flies along for a while really enjoyably.

Despite Joss’s initial one-dimensionality, she’s an actual character. She grows and changes. She has some severe denial going on. And while I mentioned the Wiccan couple above, they’re great characters with an established relationship, but the real Lesbrarian interest spark is with Joss, who has never really felt–or acknowledged to herself that she has felt–anything for anyone. I appreciated that her initial romantic awakening isn’t overblown. It’s well in keeping with her character. And Emily Ryan guides your series-reading eye toward where Joss might be headed next, relationship-wise.

That’s one of the big strengths of this book: it’s a great setup. Joss is a character you’ll want to follow, having spent a good bit of time enjoying her company in the first book, at least after the initial chapters. She’s in a setting where you’ll want to see what transpires, and there’s a whole lot that could transpire, both personally and in general. (An excerpt from book two is appended.) And I think the best part–and this is so tough not to give away, because it was really just a brilliant bit–is that there is a gorgeous potential setup of a great Big Bad.