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4.5/5

It's Pride Month on my side of the globe, which over the years has transformed from brutally suppressed rebellion to rainbow capitalism, complete with slave labor dependent companies giving discounts labeled with 'yasss slaaaay' and war crime committing drones being painted various hues of the various commercially respectable flags in hopes to recruit those who are hunted for sport in their homeland for the purpose of them doing the same to others on an international scale. For me, my relationship with this fashionable cycle has been even more vague and disconnected due to my beginning a new job on the very start of June, which in some way has been beneficial, as I've simply been too occupied, and for the most part happily so, to bitterly dwell over the idea of LGBT youths throwing their queer elders out onto the street because their favorite corporation told them to. What I have had time for is to make note of older, more out of the way literature that was fulfilling the role of representation long before I was born, and this particular piece was fortunate enough to come my way and be published during a reading challenge-utilitarian year. Such a method of choosing my reads has always been hit or miss, but this proved to be a work that scratches an itch I hadn't even been aware of having until the resolution of it grew into full blown pleasure, one of those instances that makes my arduous book buying ways all the more worth it when seeing how there isn't a single public library copy of this to be had within sixty miles of me. It didn't prove a favorite of mine, but lord if it didn't come razor thin close.

She did not want Evelyn now as much as she wanted a world in which Evelyn was always possible.

Starting this work was rather disjointing, as while it certainly embraces the studied blankness in tone and world building that certain breeds of US lit gravitate towards and that I tend to despise, the choosing of this is anything but lazy or noncommittal. For this is the sort of academic erotica/erotica academia that fatuous white dudes love to ape year in and year out, and while I'm sure the times of early 1960s USA exacerbated the author's tending towards measured thoughtfulness and near philosophical treatments of plot and character development, I personally adored this singular breed of queer slow burn. Part of this is due to instinctual personal preference reading wise, but there's also the matter of how much I ended up learning from the mediations the text delved into when it came to marriage, women-women relationships familial and otherwise, and what it really meant to engage in a mature, consensual, and life affirming relationship with a fellow adult and equate it with enabling corporate greed and other forms of guaranteeing onself eternal damnation. Various quibblings about the whiteness of it all kept me from awarding the full fathom five stars, but that doesn't prevent me from recommending this to any who are willing to take into account both the period and the place when it comes to their comprehension, for this is a piece that wears the history of its community on its sleeve, and what it has to say that goes against the happy/brainless/post same sex marriage (as if that solved anything at all) climate of today is much more complicated than screeds about political correctness, whether positive or negative, would have the public believe.

She was right to make fun of herself. But there was passion in this sparring, grieving, angry comic that had to find an acceptable disguise somewhere between sentimentality and brutality so that the world could decorously and sympathetically respond. She was just too truthful to make a success of it.

If any of that above scared you off, you may be glad to know that this, despite what dictator puritans would have to believe, this particular piece of wlw lit actually has happy ending. Sure, it's not the clear cut/yellow brick road/wedding bells that I'm sure certain authors writing today pat themselves on the back for conforming to, but this doesn't stop the text from developing an intensely sensual and deeply credible queer relationship, even going so far as to handle themes of sex work, polysexuality, and negotiating erotic female relationships in an age where the only acceptable forms under patriarchy are quickly outgrown school friendships and tepid when they aren't vicarious/vengeful relationships between mother and daughter. I'll admit that the narrative was able to sidestep a great deal of what informs wlw relationships by making money a guarantee and education a birthright, among other able white woman isms, but the conclusions it drew from its more highfalutin thought experiments are still valuable in their own right, especially when one is lying awake at three in the morning and parsing out what exactly in a disaster capitalism society where queer bodies are accepted so long as they are willing to hunt other queer bodies for sport currently has its predatory hooks in one's gut. This book isn't going to teach you how to ask about someone's pronouns, let alone get past the whole socially encouraged obsessiveness with other folks' genitals, but it does showcase the carving out of love in a land that, to all appearances, is incapable of sustaining life. For us queers who are continuing such labors, a work such as this that embraces the future rather than caves into the cishet indoctrination of human sacrifice is a blessing and a gift, and if you truly want to be an ally, making an effort to understand that is a good place to start.

I don't want to be saved. I want you.