The blurb
In 1983, Livvie Bliss leaves western North Carolina for New York City, armed with a degree in English and a small cushion of cash from a favorite aunt. Her goal is to launch a career in publishing, but more important, to live openly as a lesbian. A rough start makes Livvie think she should give up and head home, but then a new friend helps her land a job at a literary agency run by the formidable Bea Winston.
Bea hopes Livvie’s Southern charm and “boyish” good looks will help her bond with one of the agency’s most illustrious clients—the cranky Modernist writer Clio Hartt, a closeted octogenarian lesbian of the Paris Lost Generation who has rarely left her Greenwich Village apartment in four decades. When Livvie becomes Clio’s gofer and companion, the plan looks like it’s working: The two connect around their shared Carolina heritage, and their rapport gives Clio support and inspiration to think about publishing again.
But something isn’t quite right with Clio’s writing. And as Livvie learns more about Clio’s relationship with playwright Flora Haynes, uncomfortable parallels begin to emerge between Livvie’s own circle of friends and the drama-filled world of expatriate artists in the 1920s.
In Clio’s final days, the writer shares a secret that could upend Livvie’s life—and the literary establishment.
The author
Paula Martinac is the author of four published novels and a collection of short stories. Her debut novel Out of Time won the 1990 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. She has published three nonfiction books on lesbian and gay culture and politics as well as numerous articles, essays, and short stories. Also a playwright, her works have had productions with Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company, Manhattan Theatre Source, the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, No Name Players, and others. She teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
The publisher
Bywater Books describes itself as representing “the coming of age of lesbian fiction… committed to bringing the best of contemporary lesbian writing to a discerning readership.”
How I got this book
I won this in the Women & Words Hootenanny giveaway.
The bingo card
This might count towards: ‘A Woman’s Press’; ‘An author from another country’; ‘A new to you press’; ‘Marginalised people’; or ‘LGBTQIA’.
My thoughts
A historical novel with two layers: the narrator, Livvie, goes to New York in the 1980s to find a job and the lesbian scene. The job puts her in contact with Clio Hartt, a giant of the lesbian literary coterie in 1930s Paris and author of The Dismantled, but now living alone in a Greenwich Village apartment.
The Dismantled is a classic, but Clio has published nothing since. Livvie’s job is to try to get Clio writing again, which seems to lead inevitably into digging into her past to find out why she stopped writing in the first place. I enjoyed (and occasionally cringed at) Livvie’s attempts to find out, but the big twist behind this felt a bit like a fuss about nothing to me. I couldn’t quite buy it on an emotional level.
Livvie’s relationship drama tended to come second to her investigation of Clio’s past. This worked for me, if only because I wasn’t massively invested in it, and I rather liked the low-key way in which it played out.
I enjoyed the evocation of 1980s New York, and the contrast with Livvie’s Southern background. My own preference would have been for a little more inter-war Paris, though that’s purely personal, and the structure worked well as it was.
There was some period-typical but narratively unnecessary biphobia, which made me find the character it came from rather less sympathetic than she was intended to be.
I ought to have loved this one, dealing as it does with settings that I find fascinating, but overall it fell a bit flat for me.
Kathleen Jowitt 