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Dear Hella, Running just beneath the nostalgic waters of The Black Lake (tr. Ina Rilke, 2012. Original: Oeroeg, 1948), there is a disturbing current of tainted innocence: at…… Read more “The alphabet of my childhood”
Tag: Coming of age
You’re neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad
Dear John, Is The Well of Loneliness (1928) the most depressing queer novel ever written? Judging by its contenders in early twentieth-century fiction, it can be tough to…… Read more “You’re neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad”
I too have my vocation,
Dear Elizabeth, In Aurora Leigh (1856), you push your protagonist to make an impossible choice between two instances of her personality: her womanhood and her art. By…… Read more “I too have my vocation,”
Eat me, drink me, love me
Dear Christina, Your Goblin Market (1862) is a poem which teasingly resists a fixed interpretation. Is it a feminist tale / an anti-capitalist warning / a Christian…… Read more “Eat me, drink me, love me”
Before I knew I had a heart
Dear Charlotte, In Emmeline, The Orphan of the Castle (published in four volumes in 1788), we have a Cinderella-like heroine surrounded by characters who are constantly burning their…… Read more “Before I knew I had a heart”
Impossible to get out of it
Dear Carmen, In Nada, tr. Edith Grossman (2007. Original: Nada, 1944), we have a labyrinth of haunted characters confined in a haunting house in a city haunted…… Read more “Impossible to get out of it”
What if mothers refused to deny their womanhood
Dear Sibilla, A Woman, tr. Rosalind Delmar (1980. Original: Una donna, 1906) is a disturbing novella where rape, depression, suicide, adultery, and domestic violence are packed in…… Read more “What if mothers refused to deny their womanhood”
There might be nothing there
Dear Brigid, Very much like identities are fluid in your The King of a Rainy Country (1956), so the book itself refuses a label. Divided into three…… Read more “There might be nothing there”
These women, who step out of their sphere,
Dear Margaret, Hester (1883) seems to be a deceptive title: we may be under the impression that what we have in our hands is the coming of…… Read more “These women, who step out of their sphere,”
The most beautiful and most brittle of all human things
Dear Frances, It’s a truth universally acknowledged – or, at least, in the relatively small world of your Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance…… Read more “The most beautiful and most brittle of all human things”
Hers was a nature with a wide range
Dear Sarah, In The Beth Book (1897), we feel that we are reading two very different, at times irreconcilable, books: a powerful coming of age novel and a…… Read more “Hers was a nature with a wide range”
Otherwise let this mad world crush us now
Dear Elizabeth, The Morgesons (1862) is that rare thing: a 19th-century novel with a sceptical, areligious, and probably amoral heroine. It reads like a modernist fiction avant…… Read more “Otherwise let this mad world crush us now”
I reach for it and reach for it, and it isn’t there
Dear Richard, The Easter Parade (1976) is inhabited by characters who are trapped in self-delusion and false appearances, constantly parading the lives they think they should be living.…… Read more “I reach for it and reach for it, and it isn’t there”
We ourselves became the ghosts
Dear Sarah, Ghost Wall (2018) feels like one of those dreams where a character is trapped in a room whose walls keep getting narrower and narrower. We…… Read more “We ourselves became the ghosts”
One’s prime is elusive
Dear Muriel, In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), there is something in the eponymous protagonist that repels us, but there is also something that strongly…… Read more “One’s prime is elusive”
Her body seemed outside her
Dear Dorothy, Pilgrimage is a sequence of thirteen semi-autobiographical novels, published between 1915 and 1967, following the life of our protagonist, Miriam Henderson, rendered as a collection…… Read more “Her body seemed outside her”
She was completely engrossed in a single thought
Dear Sofia, Nihilist Girl, tr. Natasha Kolchevska and Mary Zirin (2001. Original: Нигилистка, 1884) reads like a tale with a void inside, wrapped-up in a blue-tinged layer of melancholy: at its…… Read more “She was completely engrossed in a single thought”
This look of sadness would last perhaps for a minute
Dear Amy, Jill (1884) is a fast-pacing coming of age story with subtle social commentary and strong feminist undertones. The novel centres on the eponymous heroine, Jill,…… Read more “This look of sadness would last perhaps for a minute”
