Reviews with content warning for Hate crime - Last Night at the Telegraph Club

If you are looking for a book that is relevant to current politics and culture, while also giving a glimpse into the past, this is the book for you. This book is about a young woman coming to terms with her sexuality in 1950s San Francisco, intersecting with her identity as a Chinese American. In San Francisco 1950-something, while queer people have the right to assembly within a bar and male/female impersonators weren't terribly uncommon, they were still a major taboo of American society. Police raids were common on all sorts of charges, particularly drug charges and "indoctrinating the youth".

Right now, in the US, drag, another form of male/female impersonation, is being targeted as being "indecent towards minors" and getting banned. But along with targeting drag, lawmakers are also targeting trans people. Here is a recent article about a law in TN preventing a local club from talking about Transgender Awareness in their school: https://www.businessinsider.com/tennessee-school-students-flyer-transgender-awareness-month-law-2023-3

I found this part particularly relevant to this book: "Lee on Thursday also signed a law banning "adult cabaret performances" from being performed "on public property or in a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult" in Tennessee. The law identifies "male and female impersonators" — drag kings and drag queens — as adult cabaret performers."

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo directly addresses this sort of bigoted targeting, only it at least seems to fit in the historical setting of the book. Not so much today. I know that this is a lot for a book review, but I felt that I had to address these current issues as they helped shape my feelings about the novel.

As for the writing, I thought Lo did a fantastic job of doing her research and I loved the almost vignette length of the chapters and scenes. It made it very easy to stay engaged with the more character-driven plot. I thought the movement through time was interesting, though the timeline of things did confuse me, even with the visual aids throughout the book. Once I just ignored them, though, I didn't have any worries about when what was happening as Lo is great at setting the period. The tension throughout the book was great as the main character, Lily, works to unravel her feelings about women, especially a few important characters. The main romance doesn't come up until the latter half of the book, but I didn't mind and actually liked the slow burn, as I am not a fan of rushed feelings. It made sense with the characters and the setting and was very relatable personally haha.

I definitely recommend checking this book out if you can, if you like queer romance, if you like historical novels, if you like a good representation of different kinds of people, and if you like books relevant to today's topics.

See you next review!

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clemrain's review

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emotional informative sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Lo has a distinct style of writing. I enjoy her attention to detail. Her dialogues are realistic, but a lot of conversation happens in the thoughts and how they are read and how Lo describes those interactions. Which I think is key for the types of family and time period Lo is writing.

I think the most dynamic and understandable character in this book was Shirley Lum. Would I want a friend like her? No. But she was an interesting character. She had a reputation to uphold and held secrets. She understood the repercussions. She, to me, was the daughter of an Asian immigrant. She found her best friend in a similar situation and the first thing she did was try to dig her out of it. Unfortunately,

she was very homophobic in her approach.

Shirley Lum was a lot more realistic and easy to relate to.

Lily’s jealousy of Shirley was a huge catalyst for much of her actions. However, those actions of sticking to truth over consequence presented her as above it all. This childishness in her to hold on to something so new yet so innate, caused a lot of anger in me. I couldn’t understand how she could be so reckless. Though the actions are incredible and something to strive for. I just couldn’t see Lily making those choices. She just wasn’t developed enough. All I’ve seen of her is her relishing in the community at the telegraph club. Her falling in love with someone she only knows on a surface level. How could these things persuade her to so easily stand up and loose the love of her family? It just isn’t realistic. I don’t understand how Lily went from point A to point B.

Kath just seemed like a love interest and nothing was interesting about her past her conversations with Lily about science. The meat of the historical moments sat with Kath.

What happened to her during her raid? How did her family react?

Still, even as a romantic interest, I kept thinking what were her feelings for Lily past the romantic? Flat character.

I didn’t understand what the point of the timeline was. As much as I liked reading about Lily’s family, I could’ve also done without having whole chapters dedicated to them. What I was told in those little chapters could’ve been condensed and delivered more efficiently.

All that to say, I can imagine this novel as a movie or even as a short story (which it was at one point). I think it didn’t effectively make use of its length. There was a lot of redundancy in scenes and much of the story could’ve been reduced.

I wish the raid had happened earlier so we could’ve gotten more of what happened after instead of having multiple bar scenes that ultimately showed the same point.

The ambition of talking about Chinese immigrants as well as the butch/queer scene of America as well as communism and America all in one novel was high. These three big ideas can coexist but in this novel they were not fully realized. There was too much going on and majority of it had no time to truly be resolved.

The ending was too rushed. The first half of the book took a while to ramp up. But I enjoyed it. It was so deeply researched and written. The intimate and realistic depiction of Lily learning about her queerness accompanied by the harsh reality of being Asian was gorgeous and relatable. But what was set up so carefully in the first part of the book did not pay off with such detail and satisfaction in the last part of the book.

For what it was, it was beautiful. It was well written. Ambitious. And at the core of it, it really was just a story about a girl whose identity was much bigger than she could begin to understand and live at such a young age. I wish we just could’ve seen her fight against it and learn from it a bit more.

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