Learned by Heart

by Emma Donoghue

Eliza and Lister have never been this wide-awake in their lives, and the Slope, with its curtains drawn wide, is bright with starlight. They talk in whispers, not to disturb the maids who lie sleeping on the other side of the box room. The question Eliza’s been needing to ask swells like a great berry in her mouth, and all at once she’s not scared to let it out, not scared at all, not scared of anything . . . <\i>

In 1805 fourteen-year-old Eliza Raine is a school girl at the Manor School for Young Ladies in York. The daughter of an Indian mother and a British father, Eliza was banished to this unfamiliar country as a little girl. When she first stepped off the King George in Kent, Eliza was accompanied by her older sister, Jane, but now she boards alone at the Manor, with no one left to claim her. She spends her days avoiding the attention of her fellow pupils until, one day, a fearless and charismatic new student arrives at the school. The two girls are immediately thrown together and soon Eliza’s life is turned inside out by this strange and curious young woman.

Learned by Heart<\i>, Emma Donoghue’s mesmerising new novel, tells the heartbreaking story of the tangled lives of two women whose intense, and unlikely, relationship will change them for ever.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, LGBT, Historical, Romance, Queer, Audiobook

323 pages, Paperback

First published August 29, 2023

About the author

Grew up in Ireland, 20s in England doing a PhD in eighteenth-century literature, since then in Canada. Best known for my novel, film and play ROOM, also other contemporary and historical novels and short stories, non-fiction, theatre and middle-grade novels.

Reviews

[Shelley's Book Nook · Rating 2 out of 5]

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2.5 Stars

I liked this book well enough but had some issues. This was a slow burn of a story, and not in a good way. The constant dialogue of teenage girls felt rudimentary and repetitive at times. The downfall lies in the telling, it felt more like a history lesson or essay.

Let's end with some things that I did like. The book and its subjects were well researched and based on Ann Lister's own journal. The relationship is told in a very loving and sensitive manner, which I enjoyed most about the book. Once Eliza is older and has left the school the story got bogged down and a tad boring to me. I just wasn't interested any longer. There is definitely excellent character development and the writing itself is beautiful, which is typical of Emma Donoghue. There are topical and timely issues even though it takes place in the 19th century. Homophobia, first love, race and class and I appreciated that but it wasn't enough the elevate this to three stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance Readers Copy.

[Melissa ~ Bantering Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emma Donoghue’s Learned by Heart is the fictional account of Eliza Raine’s romance with the infamous Anne Lister.

Having met in boarding school in early 19th century England, this is long before Lister became known as ‘the first modern lesbian’ and Gentleman Jack. The girls are young when they meet, age 14, and thrown together as roommates in the attic space of the school. They’re only friends at first, but as they grow close their relationship takes a romantic turn.

Not much is known about Raine other than she was Lister’s first love. But on the flipside, quite a bit is known about Lister, as she was a prolific diarist and much of what she wrote has been recovered. And it’s through her diaries, along with a small number of letters written by Raine, that Donoghue has pieced their story together. Her research is impeccable.

The novel is beautifully written and atmospheric in that it captures the essence of the time period and its maddening societal constraints placed upon women. It’s slow, though, and not much of anything important happens while the girls are together in school. The real goldmine is the letters written by Raine to Lister, ten years after they first meet, that are interspersed within the narrative. They’re compelling and insightful, and I wanted more of them.

My only wish for the story is a better outcome for Raine. But we can’t change history, can we? What a sad ending to such a passionate love.


My sincerest appreciation to Emma Donoghue, Little, Brown and Company, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

This is a beautifully written, if heartbreaking, story that is based on the lives of two young women in their early teens, Eliza Raine and Anne Lister. Eliza, sent from her homeland at an even younger age, and Anne meet at the Manor School for young ladies in 1805 when they are fourteen. While this is a somewhat fictionalized story, these two women were real. Anne Lister was born in the UK, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and Eliza Raine, born in India, daughter of William Raine, a surgeon.

A friendship between Anne and Eliza begins early on, both feeling a bit like they don’t fit in with the other students. Their friendship takes on an almost exclusive, hidden nature as neither feel as comfortable with the others, but trust each other. As their bond grows, their friendship evolves into love. A love that needs to be cherished, but also must never be discovered by others.

‘Time, le temps,, uncountable time. Imperfectly past time. Its great scythe cuts down all before it. My childhood is a distant country that no ship can reach. I had a sister - have one still, on paper - but we are nothing akin, quite lost to each other. I once had a father, but full fathom five he lies. I once had a mother, how long since I forgot how to speak her tongue. Dearer than all these, I once had a friend who was far more than that; a beloved whose name will ever be graven on my heart.’

’You won’t be surprised that I so treasure these old haunts. It was in York that I received my education; where I was stamped like warm wax by a seal, formed once and for all. I know you’ll recall the song—where all the joy and mirth, made this town heaven on earth. At the Manor School, I tasted heaven on earth even as I toiled to pack my poor skull with the knowledge and wisdom I was told I’d need for life. The joke is, Lister, the only lesson I learned, or at least the only lesson I remember, was you.’

Eliza is more socially reserved than Anne, she admires her for her somewhat audacious manner, and she loves her for who she is. When Anne leaves the school, though, things begin to change. That following summer, after Eliza comes to visit her, Anne is drawn to an elite social circle, and Eliza begins to recognize that she’s losing Anne, which affects her mental health, which diminishes even more as time passes.

A glimpse at another time, of girls becoming women, the decisions they made, and the memories that haunt them as time passes.

Pub Date: 29 Aug 2023


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Little, Brown and Company

[Teres · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Learned By Heart, Emma Donoghue explores the real-life relationship between Anne Lister and Eliza Raine when the two girls were pupils at the Manor school in York.

Raine is 14 and Lister 15 in 1805 when they share an attic room that they nickname the Slope.

Both social misfits, Raine, though wealthy, is the result of a “country marriage,” the child of a British surgeon with the East India Company and an Indian mother. Eliza is painfully aware of how her brown skin and illegitimacy make her stand out among her privileged classmates.

Lister, much better known today, thanks to the BBC-HBO drama series "Gentleman Jack," which is based on her life, is an independent-thinking, rule-breaking tomboy. Vibrant, defiant, and smarter than most of the other “Middles” in their class, Anne is described as “a middle-aged man of business in the body of an adolescent female.” 

After an unexpected kiss, Raine and Lister’s relationship quickly becomes romantic. While the novel focuses on the year they spend at school together, the narrative is interspersed with letters written 10 years later to Anne from Eliza when she is committed to an asylum.

Hauntingly, Raine reflects on their school days when “the only lesson I learned, or at least the only lesson I remember, was you.”

Learned by Heart concludes with a 15-page author’s note, in which we learn Donoghue investigated their personal histories for years, focusing on Lister’s secret journals and Raine’s letters from the asylum, where sadly she remained incarcerated for the rest of her life. 

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emma Donoghue returns to mining lesbian history for her exploration of the doomed relationship between Anne Lister and Eliza Raine. Lister’s become a famous figure mainly through the popularity of the drama Gentleman Jack based on her life and diaries. But here Donoghue trains her spotlight on Raine, Lister’s first love, who’s often been confined to a footnote in Lister’s biography. Raine, thought by many to be the inspiration behind the equally-tragic Bertha Mason in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, was born in India, the result of an affair or so-called “country marriage” between an English doctor employed by the East India Company and an unknown Indian woman. Sent to England as a young child, Raine was later enrolled in a boarding school in York where she met Lister, a fellow pupil.

Biracial, and now orphaned, Donoghue’s portrait of teenage Raine depicts her as someone who’s painfully isolated, hemmed in by constant reminders of her difference, her outsider status as just another of the despised “brown children” fathered by white men working in India. Schoolgirl Raine’s diffident and desperate to fit in, and this makes Lister’s forthright, confident personality a source of fascination. Lister is also an outsider but together they form a bond which makes school bearable, increasingly inseparable, their friendship is slowly transformed by love and growing desire. Set in the early 1800s, Donoghue’s dual narrative moves between a meticulous recreation of Raine’s regimented, school days and Raine ten years later, now locked away in the first in a series of asylums where she feverishly writes letters to a long-absent Lister, convinced they might somehow be reunited.

Donoghue’s beautifully-researched novel is an unusual variation on a coming-out story and a convincing examination of racism, social hierarchy, and the limits imposed by a society in which middle-class women are expected to take on the costume of stiflingly-conventional femininity. As a narrative it’s not always particularly subtle, and the level of detail shifts between compelling and overwhelming. But Donoghue’s considerable skill as a storyteller and Raine as her choice of subject made this a gripping, moving read.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Picador for an ARC

Rating: 3.5

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emma Donoghue is among the most fearless contemporary novelists we have: an immensely talented writer who is a great storyteller and, based on her extensive body of work, unafraid of subjects that give her less-courageous peers pause. She is best known for “Room,” a daring novel about a young mother’s desperate attempt to help her 5-year-old son escape the shed in which she and the boy are held captive. But she has also written outstanding historical fiction, such as “The Wonder,” “The Pull of the Stars,” and “Slammerkin,” which is both a terrific book and a fabulous word. (Look it up. You’ll thank me.) Her latest, “Learned by Heart,” is a fascinating story set at an English girls school in 1805 and — wait for it — what we once called an insane asylum in 1815. It has characters with complex internal lives, insights into the human soul, and a wrenching love story. I loved it.

[NILTON TEIXEIRA · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book, but unfortunately it wasn’t for me.
I was completely disconnected from the characters.
The writing is formidable, hence my ratings, but she failed on the storytelling, which was too slow and without any thrills. At the end I was completely bored and feeling numb.
It’s quite different from her last one, “Haven”, which I thought was brilliant.
I read the ebook and at the same time listened to the audiobook narrated by Shiromi Arserio, who did an excellent job, but unfortunately that did not help me to enjoy the story a bit more.
This is a historical fiction based on a journal/diary written by Ann Lister (aka Gentleman Jack), but she is not the protagonist here.

ebook (Kobo): 261 pages (default), 81k words

Audiobook: 8:8 hours(normal speed)

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for access to this title. I am auto-approved for this publisher. All opinions expressed are my own.
3.5 stars

Set in the 19th century in the northern English city of York, two boarding school roommates, Anne Lister and Eliza Raine become friends and then become something much more.

Truthfully, I am growing quite fond of Emma Donoghue.

The foolish reader that I am was not aware until the author's note that this is fictionalized story of two very real people. Here's your warning because it is meticulously researched and the lives of women in the early 1800s were so restricted, accept this one is going to have a rather sad ending. I don't want to get into too many details because I might say too much.

Because it is set in a girl's boarding school there are a lot of characters that do interact with Eliza and Anne. At times, this was a bit confusing and I did find the story was moving slowly toward the big moment of the story. Because it's a bit of a heavier read, I think it is the perfect selection for a fall reading experience.







Expected Publication Date 29/08/23
Goodreads Review 21/07/23

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

All of Emma Donoghue's books are so unique; all are set in different times and places and some have historical backgrounds which I find particularly riveting. This one is also based on a true story--two young teens in Victorian England at a girl's boarding school who fall in love.

Like all love stories, this one has an uneven balance of power. There is a fickle lover who seeks power and social standing, while the other girl is rich; but of a different race, so she can't fulfill her lover's dreams. Even if she could I have a feeling that no one woman could have interested her forever. The story is heavy and heartbreaking and made me rather depressed, so while a good read that will stay with me, I can't say I enjoyed it overall.

[Katie Lumsden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this one, especially having read Anne Lister's diaries. The 1805/1806 chapters give a rich, moving story of first love, with a more sombre light thrown on it by the 1815 chapters.

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m fascinated by Anne Lister having watched Gentleman Jack on TV and having read her transcribed diaries, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister and No Priest But Love: The Journals, 1824-1826. While they concentrate on her adult years, Donoghue has chosen to base her novel on Anne’s brief stay at boarding school in York whilst a teenager and her passionate affair with a fellow pupil, Eliza Raine, and the affair’s later consequences.

This is a thoroughly researched novel. Donoghue employed a genealogist to uncover as much as she could about Eliza Raine’s life. She has researched York society and living conditions in the city at the time (mainly 1805-06) and life in Manor House School. All this research authenticates her storytelling but it also very often makes the novel feel like an assignment. Unlikely scenarios that add little to the storyline are created so that the author can use her research into, for example, horse racing, the Race Ball at the Assembly Rooms, and the Spring Fair. The descriptions feel like they’ve been lifted from her notes and the scenes written around them. It’s fair perhaps to argue that this is essentially what authors of historical fiction do but, in this case, it becomes such an obvious and repetitive technique that I found it annoying.

It’s a slow read for the first half of the book but gets better as the girls are drawing closer together. Their affair is described very thoughtfully and tenderly and is easily the best part of the book. After Anne leaves the school, however, I found it dragged and so I skim read to the end, something I hate doing. The long notes by the author on her research are interesting but too long, in my opinion. I also feel that since she had so much more evidence about Eliza’s adult life than about her teenage years, I might have found it a more interesting read if her adult life had been the subject.

I wouldn’t have missed reading this book as it adds a little colour to the Anne Lister story but overall I was left feeling disappointed that I didn’t enjoy it more.

With thanks to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan for a review copy.

[fatma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You won’t be surprised that I so treasure these old haunts. It was in York that I received my education; where I was stamped like warm wax by a seal, formed once and for all. I know you’ll recall the song—where all the joy and mirth, made this town heaven on earth. At the Manor School, I tasted heaven on earth even as I toiled to pack my poor skull with the knowledge and wisdom I was told I’d need for life. The joke is, Lister, the only lesson I learned, or at least the only lesson I remember, was you."

Learned by Heart is classic Emma Donoghue: detailed, understated, finely drawn, poignant. It's a quiet, slice-of-life story, one that takes as its focus a group of fourteen-year-old girls in an English boarding school called Manor School in 1805. With a deft hand, Donoghue brings this setting and its inhabitants to life: the friendships, the gossip, the drama, the antics, the games, the teachers, the classes. Boarding schools are already such interesting literary settings, and Learned by Heart's is no less interesting. Throughout the novel, you get a strong sense of how the boarding school functions as a microcosm, a kind of world unto itself that is, at the same time, very much subject to the world outside it. What is especially compelling about Manor School, too, is the way Donoghue depicts the tension between the nineteenth-century boarding school as a formative space but also as a distinctly temporary one. The girls understand that they are in this school to be "finished," supplied with the skills and accomplishments they will need to eventually find husbands. So, in one way, the school is a means to an end, a bubble outside the "real world"--and yet in another way, it very much is these girls' world, the place where they are growing up, spending the most formative years of their lives. Needless to say, I found Donoghue's exploration of the boarding school as a setting to be fascinating, and I just loved the way she wrote about girlhood and adolescence in the nineteenth century, a time when the world seems to be opening up to these girls--when they're becoming alive to new possibilities, relationships, ways of thinking--and yet at the same time slowly closing in on them, pushing them towards that seemingly inevitable endpoint of marriage.

"Left alone in the courtyard, Eliza finds herself thinking again that school is not a rehearsal for life’s play. Not for Hetty, nor for Eliza and Lister, nor any of them. It’s the first act of the piece, performed once only. It comes to Eliza that she’ll be reliving these brief days for the rest of her life."

Setting aside, I was also drawn in by the characters of this novel, the two main ones being Eliza Raine, our narrator, who is the biracial daughter of a white English father and an Indian mother; and Anne Lister, who is a new arrival at Manor School, and who later starts up a relationship with Eliza. Just as Donoghue's sharp, detailed writing brings to life the novel's setting, so, too, does it bring to life her characters. I was especially moved by Eliza, whose loneliness in the face of her position is so keenly felt throughout the novel: her father dead, with only vague childhood memories of the mother she was forced to leave behind in India, and no family except for a sister who is cold to, and distant from, her. To be sure, it's a lot for a fourteen-year-old to handle, which is why it's so interesting when Lister arrives at the school and starts up a friendship, and later a romance, with Eliza. In Lister, Eliza finds a person she can confide in, someone who gives her the space to talk about the things she has previously found unthinkable to articulate, and, slowly, someone she grows to love deeply. The relationship between these two--first platonic, then romantic--is tender and poignant, the care and affection they have for each other so clear, and the ways they complement each other always engaging to watch unfold. And of course, Lister is no flat, boring love interest: she is bold and candid and insatiably curious, full of vigour and just the kind of person to shake up this group of girls with her arrival at Manor School.

So far I've talked about setting and character, but one last thing I want to mention is this novel's form. Structurally, Learned by Heart is a clever novel in that in between the slice-of-life sections set in 1805 and 1806 at the boarding school, we get these letters that Eliza is writing to Lister in 1815, some 10 years later. Little by little, we're able to glean information about Eliza from these (relatively brief) letters: what happened to her relationship with Lister, where she is now, how she's doing, and, of course, why she's writing these letters in the first place. I wanted to mention these letters in particular because they struck me as not just narratively effective, but also very moving, each letter a searing window into Eliza's shifting moods--whether she is melancholy, manic, bitter, resigned--a kind of thermometer of her state of mind at that particular point in time.

Learned by Heart is a meticulously researched novel, all the more impressive because it's a novel where research is not a substitute for narrative, but rather something that enriches and animates it, makes it more specific and so more vivid. I really loved this book--it broke my tiny lil heart--and I can't wait for more historical fiction from Emma Donoghue.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This deeply romantic, lushly detailed novel took my breath away. It's as delicate and rare as a vintage sari whose silk is so fine, an entire length of fabric can slip through a wedding ring or settle against the body like a soft layer of skin, images the author exquisitely conjures.

Emma Donoghue lays bare the illicit passion that grows, burns and explodes between two young women boarding at a finishing school at the turn of the 19th century. Eliza Raine is an orphaned daughter of a British father and an Indian mother, returned to England from Madras at the age of six. Only the small fortune she is set to inherit at the age of 21 and the beneficence of her caretakers allow her, an exotic anomaly, space in class-obsessed Regency England. She's assigned to a tiny attic room at the austere school for girls in York, understanding that her brown skin may be the reason for the isolation but appreciating the solitude. Her aerie is invaded by the arrival of a new girl, Anne Lister, from a minor Yorkshire landowning family. Anne, who bursts into the school like a fireworks display celebrating Lord Nelson's victory at Cape Trafalgar, become Eliza's roommate. Soon, the two teenagers are inseparable.

Learned by Heart is based on the true story of these women, Anne Lister by far the better known figure. She left behind thousands of pages of personal diaries and letters and has become known as "the first modern lesbian," the subject of many modern histories and a recent BBC series, "Gentleman Jack." But Donoghue chose to center the story from the perspective of Eliza, an historical character with a fragmented record. This was a tender and inspired choice, for though Anne went on to have many lovers during her brief but incandescent life, Eliza suffered irreparable heartbreak. Interspersed between chapters set at the boarding school during 1805-1806 are letters Eliza writes to Anne ten years later while she is "convalescing" at a mental hospital in York. Through Eliza, we witness the unique experience of a biracial immigrant living in Jane Austen's mannered society, even as distant cannons boom in the Napoleonic Wars, battles against the slave trade rage closer to home, and young women disrupt social mores in their quest for political and social agency.

Donoghue has become one of my favorite writers, fullstop. It's been a gradual appreciation: I wasn't a great fan of Room or Slammerkin, but more recent books, including Akin, The Pull of the Stars, and Haven, have seduced me with superlative prose and storytelling. Learned By Heart only furthers my admiration for this wonderful writer.

[Emily Coffee and Commentary · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pensive, tender account of the life changing love between Eliza Raine and Anne Lister. Told between a series of letters and flashbacks, Learned by Heart is a saga of first love and loss rooted in the true lives of two fascinating, convention defying women. Elegant and somber, this novel effectively captures longing, frustration, and the shattering realization that two hearts, once so fiercely knit together, could grow apart. Beautifully written and sensitive in a way that mirrors the little moments that add to something profound, this is a story that illuminates the pressures of classism, misogyny, and homophobia as well as uplifts the vignettes of the subtle ways that we defy those things, and fall in love passionately, heartbreakingly, lastingly.

[hawk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this historical fiction, based on the real lives of Eliza Raine and Anne Lister. a fiction around known people and places and times. beautifully imagined lives and loves and losses.

I thought it was really delicate and intricate in the ways it explored childhood love/first love, questionable relationship dynamics tho also just different people, manipulation/taking advantage, class, gender, racism, and women and mental health.


📖📄🖋✍✉


the novel starts with, and is interspersed with, letters from adult Eliza to Lister - which hint at/gradually reveal some of her later life and experiences - while the bulk of the novel focuses on Eliza Raine and Anne Lister in their early teens at school.


❤📄🖋💌


the story is largely told by Eliza, who is mixed race/biracial in a white dominant society. there is alot of good comment on schooling, class, gender, and racism throughout. while the core of the novel is the relationship between Eliza and Lister - both of whom don't quite conform to norms, but are also likely drawn to each other for some similar and some different reasons. amongst the story was that their relationship included their own act of marrying each other 🙂


❤🤝💎


I quite liked the later letter from Eliza to Lister, seeing Lister's having taken advantage of her, and severing their relationship (tho likely a little late, i wager). tho I could see the imbalance between them early 😢

and this, and the interspersed adult excerpts, makes for a very bittersweet story... 💔


🏨🚪🗝🏩


the last letter/entry, dated 9 years after their parting... Eliza's situation in the asylum (mostly for being a single/independent woman) .

the letter includes a reckoning of the lives of school peers, those still alive, how many married and how many more didn't...

the condition of women, in society, in impossible situations, in asylum...

🚪🗝

Lister visits Raine at the asylum - is stiff, formal, guilty, and complicit with Eliza's containment...

"I could go for your throat, and blame it on a passing derangement..." 😉❤

the power of authenticity and clarity of perception lies with Raine, while the practical power lies with Lister...

Eliza recounts the loss of Lister, who moved away before Eliza did. leaves open questions as to why, and who, all the ifs... which I suspect is also true to the pieces of information available to the author - I like that all the questions are asked, rather than one story assumed.

"at 24 I feel my tale is told" 💔


🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟


accessed as a library audiobook, really nicely read by Shiromi Arserio 😊

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was beautifully written but very sad, made all the more so when you realize Eliza Raine's story is true. Set in the early 1800s, it follows Eliza, an Anglo-Indian orphan, and the now-famous Anne Lister, as they meet at boarding school when they are 14 and eventually fall in love. The book is meticulously researched, with fascinating and excruciating details about being a young woman of colour in England at the time. I like Donoghue’s choice to tell the story from Eliza’s perspective. Like I said, beautiful, but heavy.

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned by Heart is one of those books that takes you by the heart, pulling you along on a story of passionate, but frustrated love. The lovers in this instance are two young women at a boarding school in York in the early 1800s. The novel is based on the extensive, coded diaries of Anne Lister, one of those two young women. Anne is a tomboy determined to live life on her own terms, continually looking for challenges, continually asking questions, continually being "inappropriate." Anne is simultaneously viewed enthusiastically and dubiously by other girls at the school. The second of the two lovers is Eliza Raine, the daughter of a a British medic stationed in India and an Indian woman. She's shipped off to boarding school after the death of her father. Someday, she'll be an heiress, but right now she's just a young woman living on the margins, marked by skin color.

Some people will know Anne already as she's the inspiration for Gentleman Jack, the central figure of a British television series that ran from 2019 to 2022. The adult Anne(Jack) cross-dresses and takes a series of female partners. Anne and Eliza were lovers when they were in school together. Anne was a committed diarist, who kept a coded record of her life that Emma Donoghue has used as the basis for this novel.

While Donoghue used Lister's journals as the starting place for this novel, she tells the story through the eyes of Eliza Raine, which adds richness and leaves room for Donoghue the writer to construct the novel in her own way. Raine's story is less well-known and less-successful than Lister's. Eliza spent large parts of her adult life in and out of asylums—and Learned by Heart is presented as a work penned by Raine during one of the times when she was kept away from the world. Her feelings for/about Lister swing widely. Sometimes Lister is her "one true love" and Raine is spending her life waiting for Lister's return. At other times, Raine views Lister as both disappointing and infuriating, focused on her own pleasures and unconcerned with the pain she causes others.

As always, Donoghue does an excellent job getting inside her characters, bringing readers into their minds and hearts, as well as the world they inhabit. If you are interested in lesbian history, women's history, the impact of colonialism, historical fiction, or complicated romance this is a book to keep an eye out for.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

[Nadine in California · Rating 2 out of 5]

Donoghue did a lot of research to situate this story in as much historical fact as possible, and the writing is (mostly, see below) solid, but none of that made any difference in my tepid reading experience. I suppose there's a strength in the book that compelled me not to DNF, but I can't think of what it is. I thought this book would give me a nice, quick Anne Lister fix to fill the gap left by the end of the TV series Gentleman Jack, but I should have looked more closely at plot summaries, and specifically that the main characters are teenagers - barely, ages 14 and 15. So a story about a passionate love affair between two barely teenagers, with all the purple angst you'd expect from early 19th century teens. While Donoghue's narrative voice doesn't succumb to their histrionics, their voices are often present in dialogue. Where the writing does became egregiously bad is in the sex scenes, which could easily win The Literary Review's annual "Bad Sex in Fiction" award. And they're teenagers. Ewwww.

[Linden · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the early 19th century, Eliza and her sister are sent to England with their British father, but without their Indian mother. Father dies on the trip over, and they are sent to live with his friend, and to a local school for young ladies as the only students of color. The novel alternates between Eliza's time at school and letters written 10 years later (which are from an asylum--the first hint that things didn't end well for her.) A new student, Lister, becomes Eliza's best friend, and eventually something more. The author's notes indicate that this story is based on real people--a fascinating look into a forbidden passion. Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the ARC.

[johnny ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

a heavily researched, heartbreaking, historical novel about two women who fall hopelessly in love with each other in 19th century york at a boarding school for girls. eliza, born to an “unknown” woman of color and a man who works for the east india company. sent away from india, eliza and her sister are the only people of color at a boarding school, where eliza meets lister. a romance ensues. alternating between eliza’s time at school and letters she sends ten years later from an asylum, we see the brutality of the time period.

this novel was a work of love, and it is clear that donoghue has spent hours pouring over letters, diaries, and documents in order to tell this long forgotten story. it’s a bit of a typical depressing ending, but the story haunts and remains with you long after you read it.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review!

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emma Donahue portrays the colourful Lister and Raine’s burgeoning relationship in this masterful charming yet quiet account. She skilfully explores the societal mores of the time and how little is expected of women and how cloistered they were in preparation for being married off- how soulless and dull for these characters brought to vivid life. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

[Aoife · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I received a copy of this book from Book Break UK in exchange for an honest review.

In 1806, Eliza Raine has settled into a solitary life in the Manor school - born in India, and moved to England when she was six, Eliza feels different in many ways from the other girls, not least because of her darker skin. When new student Anne Lister arrives and becomes Eliza's dorm mate the two bond quickly and friendship turns to a love, that for Eliza, will last a lifetime.

This was a well written and I would believe thoroughly researched book. I really enjoyed reading Emma Donoghue's author note at the end in which she spoke about her own relationship with Anne Lister and then her study into Eliza Raine - as well as the world's relationship with Eliza Raine who remained more of a mystery than her famous lover.

This book takes place in the school that Eliza and Anne met, in their nine months as dormmates and lovers, and I liked this setting as I always enjoy school settings (I think because of my childhood reading of Mallory Towers). The hardships of living in a school that thought being cold was good for the constitution but also the frequent kindness of the teachers who despite all, cared for the girls and then just the innocence in certain conversations and youthful joy in hijinks was always fun to read.

The mood of the book definitely changed every time the story switched from the school in 1806, to Raine's letters to Lister in 1815 as we understand what has happened to her, and that she has seemingly being dropped in a cruel way by Lister.

I liked how Emma Donoghue explored Raine's relationship with her own cultural identity. While I can't speak from an own voices perspective, I believe (hope) it was sensitively done as Eliza thought about her mother who was left behind in India, her father who perished on the journey and her sister whom she doesn't have much of a relationship with. Realistically and tragically, Eliza is very much on her own in the world other than Lister and that is more painfully obvious in 1815 when as a reader you're desperate for someone to save her. I'm also not sure I completely believed in Lister, even as a young girl, as she seemed a little too interested in Eliza's inheritance for my liking.

I liked this book but didn't love it - however, I do think this is a me thing as this book stems from a love and appreciation of Anne Lister as a historical queer figure and while I knew who she was, I didn't know much about her or Eliza Raine. I say if you go into this book with a knowledge and a passion for Anne Lister, this book would probably be a fantastic interpretation of her young life.

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emma Donoghue is a must read read author for me although I was a little dubious on learning this book was about Anne Lister's first love, Eliza Raine. I needn't have worried. This Lister is just as forthright but seems slightly less sure if herself in matters of love.

The amount of research on this book has been phenomenal but we are still left with enough of an imagined story to let Emma Donoghue's beautiful prose shine through.

The story is imagined through Eliza Raine's eyes (of whom little is known - but what little there is has been adroitly ferreted out by Ms Donoghue and a whole mess of fans/researchers). I don't actually care about which bits are fictional and which fact because it all comes together in a wonderful story of young love. It's not the happiest of endings but if you know anything about Lister (and you'd have to have lived under a rock not to have heard about Gentleman Jack) you will already know that she had many lovers over her lifetime.

I was fascinated by the young Lister as much as Raine. This story actually made me want to read more about the unusual occupant of Shibden Hall when before I've been somewhat ambivalent. This may have something to do with long queues of traffic on the way to Shibden which began after the first episodes of Sally Wainwright's drama. I live around 2 miles away from Shibden Hall and you certainly couldn't ignore the buzz in the area about Miss Anne Lister.

This is a beautiful story, delicately handled. I didn't love it as much as Haven but I would highly recommend the read.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for the advance review copy.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read and liked Room and Wonder so I expected to like this. But I was not prepared for Learned by Heart.

Drawing on years of investigation and Anne Lister’s five-million-word secret journal, Learned by Heart is the long-buried love story of Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress banished from India to England at age six, and Anne Lister, a brilliant, troublesome tomboy, who meet at the Manor School for young ladies in York in 1805 when they are both fourteen.

I typically don’t do any research or pre-reading before I read anything, not even the short summary, so I didn’t know this is based on the true story of two girls. I wasn’t prepared for how intense this was! Full of the passion, intensity, emotions and heartbreak that often accompany first love between two young women during a time when their relationship was dangerous and must be kept secret. When I finished Learned by Heart. I wasn’t satisfied with the ending - I wanted to know more! When I read the author’s note at the end of the book detailing the extensive research that had been done for this book and on the life of Anne Lister, I went down that historical rabbit hole. I’m still reading and learning about Anne and Eliza.

Loved this book and love learning about the lives of the women it is based on!

[Melanie Van Dorp · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF about 1/3 of the way through. This just wasn’t for me. I wanted to like it but I just couldn’t bring myself to finish it. There’s a lot of dialogue. A lot of characters. It seems to drag on and on and I’m not even sure what’s going on.

[Erin Clemence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emma Donoghue, of “Room” fame, returns with a new historical fiction novel, “Learned by Heart”. Based on the infamous, five-million-word journals of Anne Lister, Donoghue tells the tale of two young women, living together at a Boarding School in Yok in 1805.

Eliza Raine is an orphan and heiress, sent to England from her home in India, to live with guardians after the death of her parents. Anne Lister is a brilliant boisterous tomboy who is thrust together with Eliza when they’re forced into being roommates. But as the years grow, the young women learn about themselves, each other and the complexities of love in a time when women were meant to do little more than marry and breed.

“Heart” is told in three parts, with no chapters, although there are frequent text breaks. Each part tells a portion of the girls’ year at their boarding school, all exclusively from Eliza’s perspective. In between sections are small segments of letters Eliza has written as an adult to Lister, from the asylum where Eliza now resides.

Nothing can compare to “Room”, in my mind anyway, and Donoghue’s novels since then have been mostly forays into historical fiction, which is a completely different vein from the gripping, locked-room drama of “Room” that achieved so many accolades. Donoghue is a stellar author, regardless of the genre, and her writing is beautifully immersive. Her plots are always unique, providing perspectives of lesser-explored historical events, and I always learn something after finishing one of her newer works.

I enjoyed both Eliza and Anne, even though they were both so very different from each other. Their relationship, their first exploration of love and sex, was heartbreakingly innocent and realistic. Every reader will feel nostalgic for a time when they, too, felt real love for the first time, making them feel vulnerable and carefree all at once.

“Heart” ends in a bittersweet, yet conclusive, way, and Donoghue does her best to fill in the blanks when it comes to the secretive Eliza. Although nothing compares to “Room”, Donoghue still finds a way to mesmerize and intrigue, and I always feel a little surge of excitement when she delivers a new novel.

[Trisha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just not for me. I'd wanted a love story, even a slow-burn story. But this was over 200 pages of an 'all girl's school' day to day curriculum. I never found myself pulled in or interested.

[Come Musica · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Il tempo è la miglior medicina, me l’hanno insegnato, ma spesso le promesse dei proverbi si rivelano false. Il pensiero corrode il dolore fino a ridurlo in frammenti, e il tempo non fa che fossilizzarli, incastonandoli nel vetro per i secoli a venire.”

Emma Donoghue narra la storia di Anne Lister e Eliza Raine, due adolescenti di quattordici e quindici anni che tra le mura della Manor School. Arrivate lì per apprendere le lezioni della buona società che avrebbe permesso loro di sposare un uomo dal buon partito, scoprono, da autodidatte, quali sono le lezioni del cuore

“Eliza scuote il capo e traduce sottovoce: – «L’amore uccide il tempo, il tempo uccide l’amore» –. Formulazione impeccabile – i francesi hanno talento per i giochi di parole – ma che pugnalata. Si chiede se Monsieur creda in una dottrina cosí triste. Ha l’aria di uno che ne ha passate tante.”

Emma Donoghue, con Lezioni imparate dal cuore, dà di nuovo vita alla storia di queste sue adolescenti, altrettanto i fatti accaduti nell’Inghilterra del 1806 alle lettere scambiate tra le due ragazze nel 1815, dopo la rottura:

“Lister si gira per guardarla negli occhi.
– È questo… è stato questo ad attrarti? – chiede Eliza. – Il fatto che sono… – (quale parola scegliere, fra tutte?) – … esotica? – Si aspetta un rifiuto offeso, o quanto meno deciso.
Invece Lister dice: – La gente normale non mi è mai interessata. Forse ad attirarmi è stata la tua eccezionalità.
Eliza è fuori di sé dalla rabbia, le si annebbia la vista. – Intendi dire che hai visto il colore della mia…
– Ho visto te, Raine. Tutta te. Mi sono innamorata di te e di tutti i tuoi particolari –. Lister le stringe le mani, il calore che s’irradia attraverso i due strati di pelle di capretto.
– Ma perché proprio io?
Si aspetta un chi lo sa, o un colpa del destino.
Lister fa spallucce. – Forse perché sono un fenomeno da baraccone anch’io? Dài, piantiamola di arrovellarci. Dopotutto, chi vuole essere normale?
– Quasi tutti!
Lister si avvicina come per baciarla, lí nel bel mezzo del sentiero fangoso, davanti al mondo intero. – E invece noi due saremo uniche.”

Ricco di citazioni, il romanzo vivrà della spensieratezza e dell’incoscienza, tipiche dell’adolescenza.
Le due ragazze vivranno la propria eccezionalità in modo forte e unico e quando il fato le separerà, scopriranno che quel PER SEMPRE avrà una fine…

“Cascata di lacrime.
– La tua non è nostalgia di casa, ma del passato. Irreparabile tempus, dice Virgilio. L’irreparabile tempo.”

… e niente sarà più come prima.


“Nell’intimità del mio cranio, ricordo ogni istante. Ho contratto la malattia d’amore a quattordici anni, come un raffreddore; o forse l’hai presa tu e me l’hai attaccata, e poi è divampata fra noi. Dormivamo, ci svegliavamo, imparavamo, giocavamo, mangiavamo, inseparabili. Non riuscivo a distinguere il mio battito dal tuo. Ci riversavamo l’una sull’altra come inchiostro.

Allora avvolgimi tra le tue braccia,
amore mio, e la candela spegniamo…”

[Jaksen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting to the point of engrossing. A totally different thing from what I often read...

The story is based on diary entries and letters between two young teenage girls at an English boarding school in the early 1800's. Eliza Raine is sort of insular, biracial (English father; mother from India.) Having been shipped to London after the death of her father, she's put under the care of a friend, a doctor, and sent to boarding school. (Perhaps for lack of knowing what to do with her!)

An aside: I do know that at this time period (starting in the 1700's) many middle-class and upper-class English parents sent their girls to boarding schools. This was to prepare them to be good, wholesome, proper, upright - running out of adjectives here - wives and mothers. They were taught the necessary skills: reading, writing, sewing, dancing, religon and etiquette, and all the 'rules' of behavior their social class expected. (Some schools also taught a little science, geography, drawing, and a few other subjects.) These schools were generally run by middle class women (usually spinsters or widows) who had some property, or a house, or some place to set up a school. This was a common (and unregulated) practice at the time, and it is where Eliza Raine meets...

A girl she calls by her last name: Lister. Raine is quiet, thoughtful, studious, very aware how different she is from most of the girls. Lister is outgoing, exuberant, radiant, a dare-devil. The two become 'bosom companions,' sharing an attic room with a sloping floor. (The Slope.) Their friendship deepens, get them into trouble at times, but continues until...

Well, spoiler time. But I really enjoyed this book. It was deep and complex, poignant and sometimes heart-rending. The social expectations, the environment, the soldiers (this is the era of Napoleon!), all of it play into a very constricted life and existence for young women of this time.

By the author of 'Room,' which I haven't read, and 'The Wonder,' which I did and liked, this is an excellent and thought-provoking book.

Five stars.

[Toni · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took a little while to get into the story, but eventually, I fell into this bittersweet tale of first love based on the real-life relationship between a young Anne Lister and Eliza Raine. Donoghue has a wonderful use of language and while some of the dialogue may seem stilted when taken out of context, I felt it captured an element of the heady intensity of the connections that can form between adolescent girls. I found the subtexts of race, class, womanhood, and sexuality to be interesting and layered throughout the story

I also can't help but admire the level of commitment Donoghue has in unveiling this lesser-known chapter of Lister's life and the overall life of Eliza Raine. I am happy to have given over to the tale in the end.