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Dear Elspeth, Who can resist an awkward, introverted misfit with a wild imagination and a tragic fate? Janet, your protagonist in O Caledonia (1991), is a girl…… Read more “What fun she would have as a ghost”
Tag: Coming of age
Her heart is this red apple
Dear Irina, When Isolde (2019, tr. Bryan Karetnyk and Irina Steinberg. Original: Изольда, 1929) opens, it’s summer, sometime in the wild 1920’s, and we are in Biarritz.…… Read more “Her heart is this red apple”
The music of life and living
Dear Dorothy, We are forever exiles of our childhoods, but sometimes the smallest details can bring us back to our neverland. It takes one song, a slant…… Read more “The music of life and living”
It was under the sway of that force that I began to feel,
Dear Gabriela, A coming-of-age story, a road novel, a picaresque adventure, a piece of nature and travel writing, an epic, and a reinterpretation of Martín Fierro through a…… Read more “It was under the sway of that force that I began to feel,”
A small jewel that has always been hopelessly flawed
Dear Isobel, Every Eye (1956) is a novella that plays with the ideas of perspective and sight, narrated by a character who is trapped in her blind…… Read more “A small jewel that has always been hopelessly flawed”
The rainbow bubble came along and I grasped it
Dear Capel, Painted Clay (1917) is centred on Helen Somerset, an Australian girl coming of age in Melbourne, in the years before WWI. As the story opens,…… Read more “The rainbow bubble came along and I grasped it”
What was common could also be a flower
Dear Gwendolyn, Maud Martha (1953) centres on a working-class black girl coming of age in pre-WWII Chicago. When the story opens, the eponymous protagonist is about seven yeas…… Read more “What was common could also be a flower”
Stolen waters are the sweetest
Dear Jessie, Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral (1928) centres on Angela Murray, a middle-class girl from a black family in Philadelphia. Angela and her mother, Mattie,…… Read more “Stolen waters are the sweetest”
There was no new order
Dear Natália, Controle (2019, ‘Control’, not translated yet) is a novel centred on an absence. Our protagonist, she’s lost control, and she’s clinging to the nearest passer-by:…… Read more “There was no new order”
How can you lose something that’s growing within you, like a tree?
Dear Karin, Crisis (tr. Amanda Doxtater, 2020. Original: Kris, 1934) is a book that resists being defined, a book that resists solidifying into a unified form of…… Read more “How can you lose something that’s growing within you, like a tree?”
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board
Dear Zora, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) follows a woman’s emotional journey which reads almost like an odyssey – a series of incidents through which the…… Read more “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board”
No human being ever believed she was the right person in the right place
Dear Charlotte, A Struggle for Fame (1883) explores the way social judgements based on nationality, class, and gender give shape to one’s identity and one’s opportunities in…… Read more “No human being ever believed she was the right person in the right place”
Some strange and fundamental innocence
Dear Gamel, One Way of Love – ways of love, one-way love, love’s way, way too much love, on one’s way to love. What am I to…… Read more “Some strange and fundamental innocence”
The salvage of memory
Dear Dorothy, Can one violate a memory by trying too hard to remain loyal to it? At the beginning of your novella Olivia (1949), you offer us…… Read more “The salvage of memory”
Fame and glory, insatiable libertines,
Dear Délia, I spent the past couple of weeks immersed in three of your recently rediscovered novels: Aurélia (1883), Lésbia (1890), and Celeste (1893). In all of…… Read more “Fame and glory, insatiable libertines,”
The alphabet of my childhood
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”
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,”
