Literary Lesbians

This month’s dinner was attended by Ange, Sam, Kat, Marj, Julie, Jude, Nicole, Marg, Anna, and Bridge and Magda made a late appearance.

Kat started the discussion by saying that the wacky bits at the start and end of the book nearly did her head in, and “maybe I needed to be stoned” to get it.

Ange really liked the running narrative, but Marg thought that the switch of narrator throughout the book was confusing. Nicole liked the way the author characterised each chapter by “us”, “me”, “them”, etc.

Julie was annoyed that the sister in the book had so much voice and felt that it was like we needed a hetero perspective to validate the lesbian relationship. The main character, Anthea, was not as distinctively a character as her sister. We were allowed into the sister’s head, and not Anthea’s. The sister also changed throughout the book, and so essentially we felt that it was her story. We discussed whether or not it mattered that effectively the sister was the main character. Marj and Julie thought it did matter as they thought it was supposed to be a lesbian story from a lesbian perspective, and not a story that primarily mirrored a heterosexual perspective of a lesbian relationship. There was some discussion about whether this focus was because the author wanted it to sell to a primarily hetero audience. If so, we were disappointed in the lack of integrity, particularly as we assumed that Ali Smith was lesbian (or bisexual). We wondered whether the sister thought she was gay as well. She seemed to be obsessed with Anthea’s lesbian relationship, especially the scene where Robin puts her leg between Anthea’s.

At least, Kat noted, the author played down the hetero sex scene compared with the lesbian one.
Julie thought that the author was just trying to impersonate Jeanette Winterson (who, by the way, had a quote on the front cover of the book). Others were not sure they agreed.

Marg thought the book was really thin and lazy, and the author’s style really irritated her. She also thought that it was clunky the way the author introduced the myth. But then she admitted that she skipped over all the pages about the myth! She pointed out that the author described the myth, and then said it all over again. Everyone agreed that she could have done a parallel myth in a better way. (Sam thought that perhaps the lesbian relationship wasn’t meant to be the re-telling of the myth, and that in fact the girl-who-became-a-boy was Anthea’s grandfather. Sam thought that a better retelling of the myth could have been a story about a transgender character). We tried to think of other authors who have re-written myths (Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Attwood).

Marg though the water stuff was also clunky, but that the book was good for young people. There was some discussion about whether this was a ‘young adult’ book or not. Most people didn’t think so, although we all agreed that the characters were a bit ‘cardboard-cartoon-like’.

We did like her plain style though, and the currency of some of the popular culture references – especially the quote from the sister on page 56:

“My little sister is going to grow up into a dissatisfied older predatory totally dried-up abnormal woman like Judi Dench in that film Notes on a Scandal.”

Kat also liked the scene on page 140 where the sister is thinking about her new lover Paul in the shower:

Kat likes the fact that the shower is an intimate space for her, and relates to this. For Kat, how long she spends in the shower is indicative of how much is going on in her life.

Overall, despite our criticisms, we agreed that it was nice to read something a bit different, and that it was a fun, easy read, and overall we all enjoyed it.

The remainder of the evening was spent discussing Kat’s new dance style: Bollypole. This is a mix of bollywood and pole dancing, and Kat is about to take the Indian lesbian scene by storm.
We also spent quite a bit of time comparing the length of our fingers to see if we were really lesbians or not, although nobody could quite remember what the proportions were meant to be to say that you were or you weren’t!