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Circa 2000: Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium
An excerpt by Emma Donoghue The Fox on the Line
Any other June, we would be in Hengwrt by now. I would be waking up with the white-topped mountains ringed around me. Cader Idris, where the giant once sat, would raise its shoulder between me and all harm. Sitting under the snowy cherry tree, I would keep one ear cocked for the brook that sounds so much like a woman singing, you have to lay down your book and go and see.
But we are trapped in London, waiting to make history.
Keeping a diary is a monstrous waste of time. But I cannot seem to help it. Without words, we move through life as mute as the animals. Of course, I burn these jottings at the end of each year. What I should keep instead is a daily memorandum of F and all her works. Posterity will not interest itself in me; I am only her Mary.
On the first of June 1876, then, our Society held its first General Meeting at the Westminister Palace Hotel, Lord Shaftesbury presiding. Cardinal Manning defied the Pope and spoke in our favour. Resolutions in support of our Bill were passed with the utmost enthusiasm.
It stands to reason that those who assault nature will suffer at her hands in the end. I read these stories every other day in the Times. A boy was beating a plough horse with the stock of his gun. It backfired and took his arm off.
Do I sound uncharitable?
It has been a long year.
Every week our Bill creeps a little further through the House, progressing like a pilgrim under the flag of Lord Carnarvon. I try to steady my heart. I work a little every morning in my sculpture studio at the bottom of the garden. My hopes shoot up and down like a barometer. But we walk by the Thames when the sky has begun to cool, and F ends each evening by convincing me all over again. The great sacrifice she made last year, when she laid down all her other causes
Any other June, we would be in Hengwrt by now. I would be waking up with the white-topped mountains ringed around me. Cader Idris, where the giant once sat, would raise its shoulder between me and all harm. Sitting under the snowy cherry tree, I would keep one ear cocked for the brook that sounds so much like a woman singing, you have to lay down your book and go and see.
But we are trapped in London, waiting to make history.
Keeping a diary is a monstrous waste of time. But I cannot seem to help it. Without words, we move through life as mute as the animals. Of course, I burn these jottings at the end of each year. What I should keep instead is a daily memorandum of F and all her works. Posterity will not interest itself in me; I am only her Mary.
On the first of June 1876, then, our Society held its first General Meeting at the Westminister Palace Hotel, Lord Shaftesbury presiding. Cardinal Manning defied the Pope and spoke in our favour. Resolutions in support of our Bill were passed with the utmost enthusiasm.
It stands to reason that those who assault nature will suffer at her hands in the end. I read these stories every other day in the Times. A boy was beating a plough horse with the stock of his gun. It backfired and took his arm off.
Do I sound uncharitable?
It has been a long year.
Every week our Bill creeps a little further through the House, progressing like a pilgrim under the flag of Lord Carnarvon. I try to steady my heart. I work a little every morning in my sculpture studio at the bottom of the garden. My hopes shoot up and down like a barometer. But we walk by the Thames when the sky has begun to cool, and F ends each evening by convincing me all over again. The great sacrifice she made last year, when she laid down all her other causes
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 24, 2012
An impressive collection of contemporary lesbian fiction from 10 years ago. Many of these texts are very similar in style: lyrical, melancholic and graphic in their eroticism, but still I felt that the collection gave a pleasantly varied overview of the genre. The short stories were almost without exception brilliant, which is why it was even more annoying for me to observe an excess representation of novel excerpts. These were the weak point of the anthology, and the geek in me feels uneasy about reading prose removed from its original context.
As a whole the book still offers a lot of excellent stuff from many relatively unknown authors and serves as a good introduction to their work.
As a whole the book still offers a lot of excellent stuff from many relatively unknown authors and serves as a good introduction to their work.
April 8, 2016
Finally got through this. As I expected, a lot of the stories included were real duds: tiresome, the writing overwrought and uninteresting. But I think it was worth it for the handful that I enjoyed and that made me want to seek out the authors' other writing. I think my favorite was "Bread" by Rebecca Brown, which was just so precisely written and so strange that it was unforgettable. And I'm excited to read the longer works of Larissa Lai, Cynthia Bond, and Mei Ng that the stories in this collection are excerpted from.
March 12, 2008
It was just pure luck that I read this right after reading Michelle Tea's collection. While not a polar opposite, this collection left behind the mission district and the teen angst while still being a rich collection on life and how hard relationships are and how our families fuck us up and take care of us. It still has the stories of childhood and teenagerdom, but pulls a little further forward.
January 5, 2010
I appreciated an unexpected diversity of voices in this collection. It did make me wonder about what criteria was used to seek out and narrow down submissions, since it is hard to represent ALL lesbian literature in 300 pages. Overall, liked some stories, disliked others, probably as it should be since we can't all like everything!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews