Literary Lesbians

The book took a while to get into because the seemingly abstract references to Europa and astronomy in the first few pages didn't make much sense. It's only later, as you get to know the characters, that you start to see the bigger metaphors throughout the book.

Wild Surmise is a book about infidelity and obsession. The main character, Alex, is a married woman who has a passionate and ultimately unrewarding affair with another woman, Phoebe. Alex is astronomy's glamour girl. Phoebe is an aloof and unreachable genius who specialises in black holes. There's something Freudian in that. Alex's husband Daniel is an academic whose area is literature. Towards the end of the book he discovers his wife's affair and is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and his world starts falling apart. However, the book is not really about him, it's about Alex.

Alex is not a very likeable character. Actually, none of the characters were particularly likeable, although it was easy to feel sorry for Daniel.

Astronomy is a central subject / theme throughout the book. Alex's futile search for water (and thus the likelihood of life) on the planet Europa seems to represent the central problem facing all the characters in the book - they are all looking for something that doesn't exist. Sam summed it up by saying the book was about futility and "they are all fucking miserable"! Amy's favourite theme of alienation was also obviously apparent in a slightly different form from usual - Alex's search for alien life forms.

Sam and Ange agreed that the language in the book was beautiful and it was well written. There were some similarities in style (apart from the poetry of course) to Janette Winterson. The characters all underwent some kind of important discovery but their discovery was also tinged with something bad - there was an underlying constant negative current throughout the book. The main character Alex demonstrates obsessive addictive behaviour.

One of the reviews of the book made a point that the author appeared to value the heterosexual relationship over the lesbian one in the story. Lynnie pointed out that this was stupid, as it defined the author by her sexuality and also the characters. We all discussed the fact that relationships are relationships, whether or not they are lesbian or heterosexual, and that Porter was an author who wrote insightfully, and often painfully, about relationships.

This book is about competing desires, and in a sense the impossibility of having everything you want. The characters all learn hard lessons in the end, making the story a classically tragic one.

The book was set in Melbourne and had many references to local places with which the LL's were familiar.

Amy made the point that Porter used few words to describe a scene or situation. Amy's actual words were something like "less is more (except when it comes to bling)"!

Conversation about the book was quickly overtaken by popular culture, with excited discussion about Season 4 of the L Word. Ange was excited to hear that Carmen was in a new show called Life.

There was also some entertaining banter about ex-sex and comfort-sex, and lesbian sex agencies; stalkers; being single; staying away from straight girls; next year's Mardi Gras, and PMT.

Quotes of the month:

Sam (discussing how her and Ange's cycles are not yet in sync, so they each have PMT at different times): "Half our lives are shit!"