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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Helen Young is on a mission, a final mission before she dies. It's a secret she's held close for many years, one born of love and magic. A secret rooted in a promise made one night, long ago, in San Francisco.
The year was 1940 and the time was not kind to Helen and her friends. But San Francisco allowed them some freedom, especially a bar called Mona's. There, Helen and her friends could enjoy drinks and entertainment alongside the tourists who came to see the novelty of women dressed as men. The Circle - Helen, a lawyer; Franny, a mapmaker with more than a little magic on her side; her lover, Babs; Haskel, an artist known for pulp magazine covers; and Emily, aka Spike, a singer - knew all too well the difficulties and politics of their era. But none of them expected a very real threat to one of their own. And so, they banded together to form a plan. A plan that wouldn't come fully to fruition until generations had passed.
Passing Strange is a tale about love and the lengths you'll go to to protect the ones closest to you. But it's also an homage to the history of San Francisco.
Set against the backdrop of the World's Fair, Klages deftly brings this bygone era of The City by the Bay to vivid life. Through the eyes of Helen, Haskel, and Emily, Klages gives readers a taste of the magic of the fair, Chinatown, and even the food (oh, the food!) as well as the social atmosphere of the day.
And while magic plays a role in the tale, it takes a bit of a backseat to the rest of those elements. In particular the rules and restrictions the group live by day to day. Today, we're lucky enough to realize these laws are unfair, to say the least, and actually pretty ridiculous by any standard. But to break these rules and get caught was a risk for anyone in their position. The women, all lesbians or at least bi, were considered deviants by society's mores, which we know wouldn't begin to change during most of their lifetimes.
And yet, it doesn't stop them from living their lives.
And it's just one of the facets of these characters, one piece of the whole that Klages has built for each of them. Helen, as mentioned, is a lawyer at a time when women definitely weren't respected in that profession (or most any). Polly, who we meet later on in the story, is Franny's cousin, an obviously brilliant girl who wants to study science but is limited to universities that will actually admit women. Haskel practices her profession anonymously, as time makes it clear, with most assuming the artist responsible for her work was a man.
I loved these characters and their story. To be honest, though, they had to win me over a bit. We meet Helen at the start, in present day, and it's clear she's up to something. Something in no small part that includes a bit of revenge. And I adored her! Just absolutely adored her! I was prepared to spend the whole novella alongside her, and was a bit disappointed when that wasn't the case. Bravo to Klages for introducing a character that elicited that strong of a response pretty immediately! Fortunately it didn't take long for me to realize that each of Klages characters would win me over the same way Helen had.
There are dark undertones to Passing Strange. And not subtle ones either. But like the magic, they take something of a backseat to the endearing love story that's at the heart of the tale.
The year was 1940 and the time was not kind to Helen and her friends. But San Francisco allowed them some freedom, especially a bar called Mona's. There, Helen and her friends could enjoy drinks and entertainment alongside the tourists who came to see the novelty of women dressed as men. The Circle - Helen, a lawyer; Franny, a mapmaker with more than a little magic on her side; her lover, Babs; Haskel, an artist known for pulp magazine covers; and Emily, aka Spike, a singer - knew all too well the difficulties and politics of their era. But none of them expected a very real threat to one of their own. And so, they banded together to form a plan. A plan that wouldn't come fully to fruition until generations had passed.
Passing Strange is a tale about love and the lengths you'll go to to protect the ones closest to you. But it's also an homage to the history of San Francisco.
Set against the backdrop of the World's Fair, Klages deftly brings this bygone era of The City by the Bay to vivid life. Through the eyes of Helen, Haskel, and Emily, Klages gives readers a taste of the magic of the fair, Chinatown, and even the food (oh, the food!) as well as the social atmosphere of the day.
And while magic plays a role in the tale, it takes a bit of a backseat to the rest of those elements. In particular the rules and restrictions the group live by day to day. Today, we're lucky enough to realize these laws are unfair, to say the least, and actually pretty ridiculous by any standard. But to break these rules and get caught was a risk for anyone in their position. The women, all lesbians or at least bi, were considered deviants by society's mores, which we know wouldn't begin to change during most of their lifetimes.
And yet, it doesn't stop them from living their lives.
And it's just one of the facets of these characters, one piece of the whole that Klages has built for each of them. Helen, as mentioned, is a lawyer at a time when women definitely weren't respected in that profession (or most any). Polly, who we meet later on in the story, is Franny's cousin, an obviously brilliant girl who wants to study science but is limited to universities that will actually admit women. Haskel practices her profession anonymously, as time makes it clear, with most assuming the artist responsible for her work was a man.
I loved these characters and their story. To be honest, though, they had to win me over a bit. We meet Helen at the start, in present day, and it's clear she's up to something. Something in no small part that includes a bit of revenge. And I adored her! Just absolutely adored her! I was prepared to spend the whole novella alongside her, and was a bit disappointed when that wasn't the case. Bravo to Klages for introducing a character that elicited that strong of a response pretty immediately! Fortunately it didn't take long for me to realize that each of Klages characters would win me over the same way Helen had.
There are dark undertones to Passing Strange. And not subtle ones either. But like the magic, they take something of a backseat to the endearing love story that's at the heart of the tale.
The second in [b:a Tor.com collection of 4 queer-authored novellas|39724296|In Our Own Worlds Four LGBTQ+ Tor.com Novellas|Margaret Killjoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1522942282l/39724296._SY75_.jpg|61405231], Passing Strange starts in the modern era with a (very) old East-Asian-American woman sorting out her affairs in her last few days, we quickly flash back to follow a handful of queer women in San Francisco of 1940 — and with brief hints of magical realism. In particular, most of the plot follows the budding romance between a “male impersonator” torch singer (we’d call her a drag king these days) and a cover artist for lurid pulp magazines who meet at Mona’s 440 Club, the first lesbian bar in San Francisco, opened in 1936.
The author describes it with “inspired by the pulps, film noir, and screwball comedy, Passing Strange is a story as unusual and complex as San Francisco itself”, the novella is something she started writing fresh out of college in 1977 with 4 scenes, featuring her 2 main protagonists, which she copied around from computer to computer. Until a friend at Tor.com asked her to contribute something to their then-new novella line in 2018 and gave her the impetus to turn those fragments into this beautiful novella, described by Marjorie Ingall for Jewish online magazine Tablet as having “flashes of A Wrinkle in Time and Marlene Dietrich in Morocco and Wong Kar‑wai’s In the Mood for Love”.
Her detail of the San Francisco of queer women in 1940 is rich and vivid, including showing how these women find a place in a world that wants to deny their existence — as Klages told Joshua Wilson for The Fabulist, “My job as a writer is to describe the setting a way so that it doesn’t feel like history. It just feels like you’re going out for the evening to a nightclub where you’ve never been before.” And as Ross Johnson said in his B&N review, “it’s to Klages’ credit that she invites us to observe these women without judging their means of survival”. The title is a play on words that weaves throughout the tale — of the 6 women main-characters, they are all passing in 1 way or another and “strange” was a euphemism for queer at the time, as she told Nike Sulway for Writing from Below:
I had never heard of [a:Ellen Klages|24901|Ellen Klages|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1227067359p2/24901.jpg] before picking up this collection, but this is such a beautiful novella that I am certainly going to have to read a lot more of her work; it is easily one of my favourite recent reads and deservedly won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award and a Gaylactic Spectrum Award, as well as nominations for a Nebula Award, a Locus Award, a Bisexual Writers Award and a Mythopoeic Award.
CN: terminal illness and suicide, domestic violence, abuse by police, sporadic but significant era-appropriate homophobia and anti-Chinese racism, detail on living as a queer woman in 1940’s San Francisco.
The author describes it with “inspired by the pulps, film noir, and screwball comedy, Passing Strange is a story as unusual and complex as San Francisco itself”, the novella is something she started writing fresh out of college in 1977 with 4 scenes, featuring her 2 main protagonists, which she copied around from computer to computer. Until a friend at Tor.com asked her to contribute something to their then-new novella line in 2018 and gave her the impetus to turn those fragments into this beautiful novella, described by Marjorie Ingall for Jewish online magazine Tablet as having “flashes of A Wrinkle in Time and Marlene Dietrich in Morocco and Wong Kar‑wai’s In the Mood for Love”.
Her detail of the San Francisco of queer women in 1940 is rich and vivid, including showing how these women find a place in a world that wants to deny their existence — as Klages told Joshua Wilson for The Fabulist, “My job as a writer is to describe the setting a way so that it doesn’t feel like history. It just feels like you’re going out for the evening to a nightclub where you’ve never been before.” And as Ross Johnson said in his B&N review, “it’s to Klages’ credit that she invites us to observe these women without judging their means of survival”. The title is a play on words that weaves throughout the tale — of the 6 women main-characters, they are all passing in 1 way or another and “strange” was a euphemism for queer at the time, as she told Nike Sulway for Writing from Below:
Every lesbian pulp fiction paperback from the ’50s is titled something ‘Strange’ — sometimes it’s ‘Queer’ — but mostly it’s ‘Strange Sister’ or ‘Strange Lover’. The titles were just code for: this is gonna be queer. So I definitely wanted to have that in there.And Passing Strange, while showing us the characters’ pain as well, does show us so much of their queer joy. One of the things I really liked about that Fabulist interview is Klages’s insistence on that:
In the early 1950s, there were hundreds of lesbian paperbacks. Some of them are cheesy, almost soft-core porn, some of them are actually really well-written, but the covers of most of them have a blonde woman and a dark-haired woman. And by the end of the story, almost always, the blonde-haired woman has discovered the love of a good man and has given up her sordid past. And the dark-haired woman either commits suicide, is killed, or is committed to an asylum as incurably insane. Those women were not allowed to have happy endings.
There are a very small handful of paperbacks from that time that are exceptions. But there is a long, long tradition of lesbian stories, starting with [b:The Well of Loneliness|129223|The Well of Loneliness|Radclyffe Hall|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1415588651l/129223._SY75_.jpg|1156985] in the 1920s, where there cannot be happy ending because society — and publishing — won’t allow it. One of the things I was conscious of in writing Passing Strange was that I was determined for Haskel and Netterfield to have a happy ending, but not a Disney happy ending. No tying it up in a neat little bow.
I had never heard of [a:Ellen Klages|24901|Ellen Klages|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1227067359p2/24901.jpg] before picking up this collection, but this is such a beautiful novella that I am certainly going to have to read a lot more of her work; it is easily one of my favourite recent reads and deservedly won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award and a Gaylactic Spectrum Award, as well as nominations for a Nebula Award, a Locus Award, a Bisexual Writers Award and a Mythopoeic Award.
CN: terminal illness and suicide, domestic violence, abuse by police, sporadic but significant era-appropriate homophobia and anti-Chinese racism, detail on living as a queer woman in 1940’s San Francisco.
Passing Strange is a novella written by Ellen Klages. It follows several queer characters living in 1940 San Francisco; we mostly focus on Emily, a performer at Mona’s and Haskel, a painter who does covers for pulp novels.
This was a strange little novella. It’s both a love story and not; it sort of focuses on Haskel and Emily, but it also doesn’t. It’s not a bad story by any means, but the way it was delivered was very odd and I’m still not sure what exactly the plot or the point of it were.
We start in present day San Francisco, and we are introduced to Helen. Naturally I thought Helen would be our protagonist, but she really isn’t; she’s definitely a major supporting character, but when we cut back to the past story-line, nothing that happens involves her directly, and the plot isn’t about her, so I found this a strange choice.
We follow Helen as she brings in a mint condition painting done by Haskel, a supposedly prolific male painter who covers for pulpy literary magazines and books. I found it kind of funny and fitting that of course people would immediately assume that Haskel is a man because she drew covers of naked ladies in peril, and the whole conversation between Helen and the bookshop owner was pretty funny.
There were things in this novella that I thought were interesting and well done; the girls talk a lot about the ridiculously sexist and oftentimes bewildering double standards of the 40’s. I had no idea there was such a thing as a law prohibiting women from wearing men’s clothing and having to wear 3 articles of clothing with a label from a female company. I also didn’t know that establishments like Mona’s bar were even legal, considering how staunch and vehemently homophobic the laws were in the 40’s.
While for example the 3 article thing was amusing, the time period was anything but for women, PoC or queerfolk. While Klages maintains a rather light tone, some of the things that happen in the book were really horrific, like Jack being arrested, Fanny not being able to own her own property because she shares it with a ‘live in partner’, everything to do with Lev, or Helen’s entire life as a performer in horribly racist entertainment.
However, none of the women are really victims in the story, which I really appreciated. Everyone lives their lives as best as they can; Helen doesn’t like what she’s forced to perform, but it pays her bills; she doesn’t like that queer women can be visible only as a tourist attraction, but it means they can exist publicly. There is some talk of bisexuality, there’s discussion of labeling between lesbians as butch and femme and how rigid those labels can be, while not everyone wanting to identify as one or the other.
There were also very amusing bits, like Haskel being a student of Diego Rivera and knowing Frida; now that’s a story I want to read. I also liked Emily being extremely good at playing men and being tomboyish and androgynous, while still firmly being a woman and not wanting to identify as a butch.
The parts of the novella I found weakest were the magic. It’s discussed, but it’s so rarely used on the page that I felt like I was reading a work that falls within a larger universe where the other books established the magic system and the world. The plot too was flimsy; since we spend so much time with characters that are not Haskel and Emily, by the time we actually get to their love story I didn’t have a great grasp on them as characters. I feel like this could have maybe worked as either a longer work, that fleshes out the world more, and gives each of the 6 women their own subplot or focused more tightly on Emily and Haskel.
Overall, it was a fine story. I can’t say I loved it, but if you are in needs of some period queer fiction with a happy resolution and some magic, check it out.
This was a strange little novella. It’s both a love story and not; it sort of focuses on Haskel and Emily, but it also doesn’t. It’s not a bad story by any means, but the way it was delivered was very odd and I’m still not sure what exactly the plot or the point of it were.
We start in present day San Francisco, and we are introduced to Helen. Naturally I thought Helen would be our protagonist, but she really isn’t; she’s definitely a major supporting character, but when we cut back to the past story-line, nothing that happens involves her directly, and the plot isn’t about her, so I found this a strange choice.
We follow Helen as she brings in a mint condition painting done by Haskel, a supposedly prolific male painter who covers for pulpy literary magazines and books. I found it kind of funny and fitting that of course people would immediately assume that Haskel is a man because she drew covers of naked ladies in peril, and the whole conversation between Helen and the bookshop owner was pretty funny.
There were things in this novella that I thought were interesting and well done; the girls talk a lot about the ridiculously sexist and oftentimes bewildering double standards of the 40’s. I had no idea there was such a thing as a law prohibiting women from wearing men’s clothing and having to wear 3 articles of clothing with a label from a female company. I also didn’t know that establishments like Mona’s bar were even legal, considering how staunch and vehemently homophobic the laws were in the 40’s.
While for example the 3 article thing was amusing, the time period was anything but for women, PoC or queerfolk. While Klages maintains a rather light tone, some of the things that happen in the book were really horrific, like Jack being arrested, Fanny not being able to own her own property because she shares it with a ‘live in partner’, everything to do with Lev, or Helen’s entire life as a performer in horribly racist entertainment.
However, none of the women are really victims in the story, which I really appreciated. Everyone lives their lives as best as they can; Helen doesn’t like what she’s forced to perform, but it pays her bills; she doesn’t like that queer women can be visible only as a tourist attraction, but it means they can exist publicly. There is some talk of bisexuality, there’s discussion of labeling between lesbians as butch and femme and how rigid those labels can be, while not everyone wanting to identify as one or the other.
There were also very amusing bits, like Haskel being a student of Diego Rivera and knowing Frida; now that’s a story I want to read. I also liked Emily being extremely good at playing men and being tomboyish and androgynous, while still firmly being a woman and not wanting to identify as a butch.
The parts of the novella I found weakest were the magic. It’s discussed, but it’s so rarely used on the page that I felt like I was reading a work that falls within a larger universe where the other books established the magic system and the world. The plot too was flimsy; since we spend so much time with characters that are not Haskel and Emily, by the time we actually get to their love story I didn’t have a great grasp on them as characters. I feel like this could have maybe worked as either a longer work, that fleshes out the world more, and gives each of the 6 women their own subplot or focused more tightly on Emily and Haskel.
Overall, it was a fine story. I can’t say I loved it, but if you are in needs of some period queer fiction with a happy resolution and some magic, check it out.
I have not been the best sticking to my goal of all LGBTQIA+ authors. It's hard with a baby and only having audiobooks to choose from. This short little ditty took two weeks.
But I'll keep trying. I also don't want books on my shelf that I haven't read to stack up me again so I will tackle those from time to time.
This one was light on the magic and had a bit of an overdone plot in parts. I still enjoyed it. Not a bad f/f romance set in the 40s.
But I'll keep trying. I also don't want books on my shelf that I haven't read to stack up me again so I will tackle those from time to time.
This one was light on the magic and had a bit of an overdone plot in parts. I still enjoyed it. Not a bad f/f romance set in the 40s.
Felt a little choppy at times, but was overall an amazing book.
This story sucked me right in, but it wasn't quite the story I expected.
It opens with a compelling framework, that of an older woman retrieving a hidden and valuable painting from a hidden tunnel hearkening back to Prohibition days before quietly dying. And then we get to the heart of the story, which seems like a love story against the backdrop of 1940s San Francisco, following a core of several women, including Helen, the woman from the introduction and Haskel, the painter of the valuable work. There's an initial whisper of a hint of magic, but it fades away, leaving a story that feels more like historical fiction as Haskel meets and falls in love with the lovely Emily, a singer from the local club, known, among other things, for being "a haven for women who loved each other could meet in public without fear or the shame of sidelong glances from 'nice' ladies." Things are going lovely, for the most part, until someone from Haskel's past shows up, and disaster threatens to unravel everything.
About two thirds of the way through, I looked up from the book in surprise, wondering why it was classified as a fantasy since I hadn't really seen much magic. Oh, it had been hinted at in a couple places, crept into the occasional conversation, usually contrasted against science in the process, both otherwise quietly unacknowledged. And then everything came together. I had been lost in the atmosphere and the air of forbiddenness foreshadowed in the reference to Prohibition in the introduction, that I had forgotten there was supposed to be magic. I'm not sure if that's a matter of narrative unevenness, or simply a testament to the author's compelling homage to San Francisco and the people who found sanctuary there.
If anything, when it was over, I immediately wanted a sequel.
It opens with a compelling framework, that of an older woman retrieving a hidden and valuable painting from a hidden tunnel hearkening back to Prohibition days before quietly dying. And then we get to the heart of the story, which seems like a love story against the backdrop of 1940s San Francisco, following a core of several women, including Helen, the woman from the introduction and Haskel, the painter of the valuable work. There's an initial whisper of a hint of magic, but it fades away, leaving a story that feels more like historical fiction as Haskel meets and falls in love with the lovely Emily, a singer from the local club, known, among other things, for being "a haven for women who loved each other could meet in public without fear or the shame of sidelong glances from 'nice' ladies." Things are going lovely, for the most part, until someone from Haskel's past shows up, and disaster threatens to unravel everything.
About two thirds of the way through, I looked up from the book in surprise, wondering why it was classified as a fantasy since I hadn't really seen much magic. Oh, it had been hinted at in a couple places, crept into the occasional conversation, usually contrasted against science in the process, both otherwise quietly unacknowledged. And then everything came together. I had been lost in the atmosphere and the air of forbiddenness foreshadowed in the reference to Prohibition in the introduction, that I had forgotten there was supposed to be magic. I'm not sure if that's a matter of narrative unevenness, or simply a testament to the author's compelling homage to San Francisco and the people who found sanctuary there.
If anything, when it was over, I immediately wanted a sequel.
I knew nothing about this book going in, so everything about it was a pleasant surprise.
The book opens with an elderly woman embarking on a last quest before she dies: selling the final painting by the mysterious painter of weird fiction pulp magazine covers, Haskel. The novel then flashes back to Haskel's story. Set with the lesbian community of 1930s San Fransisco, Passing Strange is a love story sprinkled with small touches of magic. I don't know if I would go so far as to call this book fantasy--for the most part it is truly immersive historical fiction. Then one of the characters will do something surprising and impossible. But sometimes you need a little magic if you want to give a happy ending to people that historically the world has not been kind to.
The book opens with an elderly woman embarking on a last quest before she dies: selling the final painting by the mysterious painter of weird fiction pulp magazine covers, Haskel. The novel then flashes back to Haskel's story. Set with the lesbian community of 1930s San Fransisco, Passing Strange is a love story sprinkled with small touches of magic. I don't know if I would go so far as to call this book fantasy--for the most part it is truly immersive historical fiction. Then one of the characters will do something surprising and impossible. But sometimes you need a little magic if you want to give a happy ending to people that historically the world has not been kind to.