Sylvia Brownrigg

Oh look, another LGBT novel! Are we surprised? At this point, if you are, then you haven’t been following me for long enough…
This novel caught my attention at first, and the first half of it was spectacular. Flannery is a writer who became famous with her debut novel, but her second novel unfortunately tanked. She’s a mother to a very sweet little girl and married to a bombastic, larger-than-life artist who is a bit too egotistical for my liking. She’s experiencing writer’s block, and has been for a while, and is pleasantly surprised when she’s invited to a seminar as a guest speaker at her alma mater. And then she’s even more pleasantly surprised when she realizes that the keynote speaker is her old flame, Anne.
The novel is split into three parts, the first and third part being told by Flannery and the middle part being told by Anne. They met when Flannery was a student and Anne was a post-graduate in the same department, and they very quickly fell in messy, heated love. Unfortunately, it only lasts a few months, and soon they part ways. And years later, this seminar is them meeting again.
You would expect that their reunion would be wonderful, full of amazing scenes and would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Instead, it’s just so…anticlimactic.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the trope – lovers meet after years apart and reconcile. But it’s just so boring. There could have been so much to this story beyond what it gave me and I was expecting so much more. Maybe it’s just being realistic in the way it shows how sometimes you just want one night with the person who you used to love to get closure and that’s it. But the way that the story builds up to that moment and the way that Anne and Flannery talk to each other just makes you believe that their love was a timeless affair that crosses boundaries. When all it was, in the end, was a fling.
So yeah. This could have been better.
I give it a 3/5. But, you should still read it, because we all need more queer stories in our lives.… (more)

From the moment this book arrived in the mail it felt like a gift. I took it out of its cell-wrap envelope and noticed at once the beautiful paper: thick, textured. It smelled nice. Open it. The stories unfold one after another, separated by contemporary art that also folds out, spills out from the borders of the book--clouds, mostly, and skyscapes, and landscapes that are arresting and disturbing, both at once, much like the stories between the art. Indeed reading this, turning the pages, felt much like visiting an art gallery. I've used that metaphor for reading before, here. But in this case I mean it quite literally: this book is a work of art to be held in your two hands, and turning its pages is an act of sensual discovery that goes beyond story and touches me in ways beyond the words on the page.

The seven stories here are perfect recreations, for me, of the disorientation I have often felt, while traveling, as a relatively wealthy (white) woman who has come to a less-wealthy-less-white part of the world. The solitary female traveler in these stories is confident enough to travel alone, and yet she never escapes the feeling that something bad is about to happen. The stories capture the anxiety of being new to a place, while not having enough knowledge to be able to know just what level of danger you are in.

The effect of reading this small book is one of profound disorientation, a kind of disorientation that made me feel very alert as a reader. Every word and moment mattered. It was not like reading at all. It was as if the book was recreating a feeling in me, inviting me to fully remember a feeling I've have often had when traveling, and have always tried to push past and move on from, instead of learning from it.… (more)