Another fascinating read from Robin Talley. And this one ambitiously weaves together two stories set in two different eras, both exploring what it's like to navigate life as a girl who likes girls. And what a contrast it is!
In the present day, Abby is dealing with her life imploding. Her parents can't stand to be in the same room as each other and the short break she thought she and her girlfriend were taking seems to be permanent. Her schoolwork is starting to suffer, especially the major project she hasn't even come up with an idea for yet. So when she discovers a pulp lesbian novel online, she's intrigued and decides she can write something similar, but inverting the tropes of the 1950s style.
In 1955 Janet and her best friend are in love, but have to keep their passion for one another a secret. Especially when Marie gets a government job at a time when McCarthy's witch-hunts were not just about uncovering Communists. Unable to live out loud, Janet becomes obsessed with novels about women loving women, even travelling to remote suburbs to trawl through drugstore bookshelves for new volumes.
As Abby's obsession with an author known as Marian Love grows, the lives of these two women, more than sixty years apart, become entangled in a way neither would ever have believed was possible.
I really enjoyed this side-by-side look at different eras. I knew we'd come a long way, but this really highlights it. It also gives a real sense of the terror under which lesbians of the fifties were forced to live. And how a single word or comment could be enough to ruin someone's life and career forever.
But don't just listen to me. Here's the blurb:
In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet Jones keeps the love she shares with her best friend Marie a secret. It’s not easy being gay in Washington, DC, in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a newfound ambition to write and publish her own story, she risks exposing herself—and Marie—to a danger all too real.
Sixty-two years later, Abby Zimet can’t stop thinking about her senior project and its subject—classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Between the pages of her favorite book, the stresses of Abby’s own life are lost to the fictional hopes, desires and tragedies of the characters she’s reading about. She feels especially connected to one author, a woman who wrote under the pseudonym “Marian Love,” and becomes determined to track her down and discover her true identity.
In this novel told in dual narratives, New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley weaves together the lives of two young women connected across generations through the power of words. A stunning story of bravery, love, how far we’ve come and how much farther we have to go.
