Literary Lesbians

After a summer hiaitus, the literary lesbians snuggled up under their doonas and got back into the books. Sadly, our first book of the year was a complete fizzer. For once, everyone actually agreed with one another - this book was AWFUL!

Kat, Lisa, Shar, Sam, Ange, Amanda, Kira, Sally and Lynnie had an absolute ball discussing this novel. Highlight of the night was Lynnie and Sally's performances: Lynnie would narrate parts of the book while Sally would act them out to demonstrate how ridiculous the descriptions were. Visualise: "Paris gave a weak smile and nodded in agreement, tears still occasionally filling her eyes and spilling out....She sat down on the bumper of her car and allowed the breeze to stir her hair...A shiver ran up her back and made her shudder..."

Kat summarised the book's contribution to lesbian fiction as follows: "If I was a straight girl and I read that and thought that was what lesbian sex was all about I wouldn't try it"! We all cracked up laughing at phrases like "mounds rubbing" and "her musky womanness" (Sal quickly turned this last one into a deodorant commercial).

Overall we agreed that this book was so overdone with cliches that it was painful. Lynnie and Sal pointed out that you could find at least one cliche per page - usually many more. Sal read out the author's profile at the back of the book and laughed about how even that was full of cliches. We all rolled our eyes at the line "she is once again back where bare feet, faded jeans and lazy streams fill her life"...oh, puhleez! Lynnie said that you could almost complete all the sentences without having to read the end of each one (...except that she would never complete sentences in such a dreadfully cliched way)!

Kat wondered whether the author had written a standard heterosexual Mills & Boon type novel and had just done a find-and-replace to change all references to "he" to "she" to make it a lesbian love story. Lisa thought that the author probably wrote it as a heterosexual love story and then thought this is such crap that nobody will buy it - so let's make it a lesbian story because there's nothing much in that market so I'll have more chance of selling it! Lisa did point out that the one (small) thing in the book's favour was that it didn't have a whole lot of the typical political lesbian stuff. Sam said that she thought maybe the book was self-published!

Ange thought that even the font on the front cover was bad! She also pointed out that the book was supposedly about strong characters but they were really quite pathetic. For example, Paris's way of dealing with the real estate agent was hopeless. Sal said that the book kind of reminded her of an earlier book we read "Between Mom and Jo" in that the couple was quite stereotyped. Paris was like Mom (the driven strong lesbian) and Sloane was like Jo (the kind of down to earth sensitive one). We all made loud 'eeeew' noises to the names Paris and Sloane. Kat thought it was a bit odd that Paris didn't recognise Sloane when she first met her at the house (when she had just recently been thinking about her and all the old memories).

Kat liked the fact that Sloane went out of her comfort zone to chase her girl to the big city. Sal said that Paris was a bitch. Lynnie responded indignantly: "hey, she was hurt Sal"! Despite the fact that we all thought the book was terrible, we also all read it right to the end and frequently in a very short space of time. It was easy to read and somehow, despite the dreadful writing, we had to get to the oh-so-predictable end.

There was some discussion about Paris's grandma's spirit hanging over the house and the theme of the place of connection. Kat said that if Paris really thought this then she'd track down the original bathtub and chandelier and restore the house to its former glory. Sam said that as a cardiac surgeon, she wanted sensor lights and a spa.

Ange pointed out that Sloane never actually asked what Paris did for work. Lynnie's quote of the night was "that's because she just wanted to slam her". Kat really thought that there should have been a scene where they played doctors and nurses.

Everyone agreed that the best character in the book was Barney the horse, and we laughed about the confusion where Paris thought that it was actually Sloane caught in her burning house. Bad taste jokes about barbequed pony and the fact that Sloane was obviously very short and horsey looking followed.

We discussed whether or not the author was actually a lesbian. Sam joked that the author was probably a teenage boy, but Kat pointed out that if a male had written it the sex scenes would have been hotter! Kat thought that given the dreadful sex scenes, the author must be either straight or a lesbian virgin!

Lynnie pointed out that the chapter of avoidance, where Paris returns to the city and Sloane couldn't contact her, was supposed to build suspense but in fact it was so obvious what was happening. Lisa agreed that the plot was really not sophisticated. Kat reminded us that the sex was crap. Sal agreed that there was very little interaction between them during the sex scenes. One of them was always fully clothed and just pleasuring the other. There was no mutuality.

Sal and Sam both drew Freudian type of drawings about what the lake, the island and the weeping willow looked like to demonstrate that it was just a metaphor for the female genitals. Judging by the quality of their artwork, neither of them got very far past cut-and-paste at kindy.

OH! And this was our one-year anniversary of the Literary Lesbians Reading Group! A milestone for well read lesbians of Melbourne! CHEERS!