Literary Lesbians

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Literary Lesbians Word Cloud

A word-cloud of our blog, created by Wordle (click to enlarge):

posted by Literary Lesbians at 7:27 PM 0 comments

Sunday, August 3, 2008

JUNE: A Curious Intimacy


It was a small gathering for this month’s book, just Sam, Ange, Kat, Sally and Jude, but there was no shortage of discussion! General consensus was that this book wasn’t great. Not as bad as Beneath the Willow, but not good either. Lynnie couldn’t make it to dinner, but sent a message with her thoughts about the book. She thought the book was “badly written, almost as bad as Beneath the Willow. It was very disappointing, especially as it was marketed as a 'literary' type novel.”

Sam started the discussion by quoting something she read on the web: “This book has martyr written all over it”. Jude responded with an interesting question: “Which one did you think was the martyr?” Interesting discussion followed about whether Ingrid or Ellyn were more like martyrs in the story.

Sam thought the book was a rip-off of The Well of Loneliness. Supportive father, no mother (very Disney!), horse riding, fox hunting, married woman who breaks the ‘real’ lesbian’s heart.

We spoke briefly about the botanical references (Jude thought she didn’t do her research very well about that) and how many seemed to imply reference to female genitalia. We weren’t sure about the appropriate female equivalent to the word ‘phallic’ and wondered about ‘vaginal’, ‘labial’ or ‘clitoral’ imagery. Sal told us about a meditation retreat during which one of of the gods at the front of the room was holding something between his hands and it looked very clitoral. Every time she opened her eyes she got very distracted!

Kat quite liked the book (although she thought that maybe she just liked it compared with Beneath the Willow, the book we all hated from the month before last). She thought that it was weird that, for the era of the book, it was page 186 before anyone asked Ingrid where her husband was, or why she was not married.

Sal pointed out that the book was very basically written, and that the author had described everything in minute detail, much of which was so irrelevant. Ange noted that the author had been deaf since the age of 4, and wondered whether the intense visual imagery might be related to that fact. Jude thought the book needed a good editor, and that writing in a style other than first person might have helped.

Ange quite liked it when she started, thinking that the concept of the book (lesbian, Australian, botanical themes, set in the 1800s) was a good one. But things went downhill.

Sally thought that the author kept using bigger words to try to sound more literary or more interesting, but that it just didn’t work. For example, page 8:

What I really wanted was to set up camp before nightfall, but the woman peturbed me.
‘Just one cup?’ she asked. ‘I should be glad of the company.’
‘Well, perhaps a quick one,’ I conceded.
Mrs Ives smiled. I followed her up the steps to the house, the dog sniffing my boot. I supposed he could smell the wound.

Kat laughed and said, ‘yeah, that bit read like: I thought you were weird but I decided to stay for a lovely cup of tea anyway’!

Sal was waiting for the wound to have some significance.

Sal also pointed out that this book, like many others we’ve read, had the same stereotypes over and over again. A strong masculine woman, earthy and ‘of the land’ and a frail femine one. Sam explained: ‘real lesbians are earthy’! One woman who pursues the other and is confident in her lesbianism and feelings, and the other who take ages to ‘give in’ to the other. Very Mills & Boon.

Ange was just disappointed that there was no minature horse in the book. We all cracked up remembering Barney from Beneath the Willow.

Jude thought it was amazing that Ellyn hadn’t topped herself after losing her child and having no support. In those days people didn’t acknowledge that grief. Babies died often, there were no grief counsellors. Jude was pretty angry with Ingrid. Ellyn was having a breakdown about the death of her child, and Ingrid was petulantly saying ‘don’t you want to be with me?’ Sal agreed that Ingrid didn’t portray Ellyn as a grieving mother, but as a needy person.

Ange thought that Ingrid would have ‘shagged anyone she stumbled across in the bush’! Jude said she was really needy. Sam described her as a martyr.

Kat was so glad that she didn’t give in to Helena at the end.

Sal was frustrated by the part where Ingrid was saying goodbye to Mr Phillips. Mr Phillips was described as getting uncomfortable when he was giving her the present. The way it was described Ingrid was very knowing and self-sufficient – there was no real explanation about why Mr Phillips was uncomfortable. The author made it sound really significant but it was rather strange – niaive perspective. Jude agreed that the book had lots of loose ends.

Kat also pointed out that the author alluded a lot to other relationships not being perfect, but never really reached any point. The book explored some turbulent relationships. Jude thought she was trying to show hypocrisy.

There was some discussion about whether or not Ellyn was actually gay, and whether or not you could/should define gay anyway.

Sal wondered why nobody ever confronted Margaret. Kat also wondered why Ellyn didn’t confront her husband about why he had changed.

Ange said that he knew something was going on and didn’t want to know, so was in denial by drinking.

Kat described Ingrid as Daddy Warbucks with all her money, trying to be Ellyn’s sugar mummy.
Jude really liked the last page, especially the bit about people reaching their limits and having had enough. Kat was surprised by the emotional depth Ingrid found at the end, deciding to wait for Ellyn to come to her. Sal said “thank god”!

As usual, Kat was our expert critic about the sex scenes, and was again disappointed! She pointed out that the characters didn’t really seem to enjoy sex, there was no real indulgence, and Ingrid didn’t seem to get any real pleasure at all. We defined a new term for this kind of sex ‘perfuctory’.

Kat wondered whether readers are not ready to hear/read about lesbians who don’t fit stereotypes? Like wearing dresses and lipstick? We told her to google Deborah Hutton!

Last month we ended with a competition: everyone had to come up with imaginative explanations for Kira to use next time she is held up at customs in Fiji with a dildo, about why it is not ‘obscene material’. Here are some of the ideas we came up with:

posted by Literary Lesbians at 8:21 PM 0 comments