The Woman in Beige

by V.G. Lee

Lorna has a newspaper round and her unemployment cheques to support her in her mission to complete The Alternative Alternative Cookbook. The only distractions are her neighbour Mr E in his wilderness garden with the giant albino rabbit Alfred the Great, and a woman called Dan who dresses in beige and makes Lorna's heart leap with every encounter. But it won't be long before Dan's strange behaviour makes Lorna suspect her of a most peculiar crime.

Genres: Fiction, Lesbian, LGBT

332 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

VG Lee is a comedian and author of five novels and two collections of short stories. In 2012, Lee was nominated for a Stonewall Award for writing and in 2014 she won the Ultimate Planet Award for Best Established Author. Her most recent novel, Mr Oliver’s Object of Desire was runner up for the YLVA Publishing Literary Prize for Fiction 2017.
Lee is also one of the judges for the prestigious Polari Prize. Her second short story collection, Oh You Pretty Thing was published by Tollington Press in February 2019.

Reviews

[Susana · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Woman in Beige is the story of Lorna Tree, the central character and narrator. Through Lorna’s wry look we are introduced to her daily life, and her struggle to make sense of people and situations around her. She is an outsider living from dole money and making a newspaper round in order to be able to write the poems nobody publishes. Her almost obsessive-compulsive habits start, little by little, to make sense as we are introduced to her dysfunctional family and network of neighbours and friends. We also learn of her childhood, spend with her brother and her grandmother, with absent parents that visited mainly to criticise and disrupt their lives. Although she believes “We Trees are like swans - we mate for life”, it is easy to understand why Lorna has lived a mostly uneventful life and why she has kept herself mostly uninvolved emotionally. Lorna’s obsession and afterwards her involvement with Dan, the woman in beige, may seem to be the main story line in the book. However, this is a book about trying to grow up and being able to leave your childhood traumas behind. In this sense, unlike Lorna, Dan represents someone that stays a prisoner of the dependent relationships needed to survive her traumatic childhood. In The Woman in Beige, V.G. Lee manages to write about serious subjects while managing to frequently make us laugh out loud. A highly recommended book.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and funny and sad, and honestly this book got me through an exceedingly rough couple of weeks. Didn't want to get to THE END.

[lydia · Rating 4 out of 5]

lorna tree - what a heroine!

[Sophia Barsuhn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very British, very funny, surprisingly moving. I have found yet another author that I need to read more of.