I, like Catlady, did not enjoy this book at all. It was a staggering disappointment to me as a gay reader, but I'll get to that.
Mechanically, the pacing was uneven at best. I felt like the historical accuracy was iffy, at best, and ignored some of the issues that the text itself raised. The characters were very one-note and stereotypical. And it is the stereotypes that drove me absolutely nuts.
Were you brave enough to google lesbian stereotypes, you would get tons of lists on sites as varied as CNN to Jezebel to Glamour Magazine. But almost every list shares these tropes:
- History of parental abuse
- History of male partner abusing a woman before she starts dating men
- Attended college either in California or some incredibly exclusive East Coast women's college
- Couples move in together immediately after a first date (sometimes known as U-Haul lesbian)
These stereotypes, particularly the first, have haunted gays for years and can be used in incredibly harmful ways against us. And
every single one of them was in this novel in a real plot-related way.
You may be saying to yourself, "Well of course there would be parental issues in the 30s and 40s when this behavior was so frowned upon." But the thing is, in the book and in the stereotype, the abuse was unrelated to the child's sexuality. It was just there to create a trauma for the character. This sort of plot device is incredibly harmful because it conveys the underlying notion that a person is not born gay, but rather, is made gay by having a
bad thing happen to them. This trope is actually frequently used against gays to demonstrate we are somehow damaged and in need of fixing, not born this way. From the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Quote:
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Many anti-gay rights activists claim that homosexuality is a mental disorder caused by some psychological trauma or aberration in childhood. This argument is used to counter the common observation that no one, gay or straight, consciously chooses his or her sexual orientation.
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Klages not only gave her protagonist a horrible mother, but she ALSO gave her an abusive male partner.
ETA: In my rush this morning, I did not address the latter two stereotypes - the colleges and the U-Hauls. This notion of educated lesbians being bred at Wellsley, etc., is exclusionary in a big way. It denies the experiences of poor and poorly educated gays and lesbians, particularly those of color. I was particularly bothered by the "oops started sleeping with my college roommate and we got caught" episode. Had I been caught with a woman as a teenager, I would have been either homeless or forced into conversion therapy (which would have been worse). All the women in this story have found their way on their feet somehow and that is just not the reality of it.
The U-Haul stereotype just smacks of desperation. It portrays women who are so desperate for domesticity that they will literally attach themselves to the first eligible candidate. By taking this immediate jump, partners do not actually talk about issues or discover habits that might make co-habitation difficult. It is also just lazy writing. Woman loses home and a woman with space and the financial ability appears and provides a loving home.
Even if I could have gotten past the stereotypes in general, the plot revolving around the need to rid themselves of the big, bad, man in a way that ends in his death was just too much.
I'm just vastly disappointed, and more so because this book got such acclaim.
(I'm not sure there is a way to not toe the water on politics here, so redact whatever you think necessary, issy).