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A review by alexreadsboooks
Speak Its Name by Kathleen Jowitt
4.0
This review also appears on my blog alexreadsboooks
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Lydia Hawkins is an Evangelical Christian and a lesbian. Everyone knows the former, but no one can ever find out the latter.
But when she meets the inhabitants of 27 Alma Road, she starts to realise that maybe it doesn't have to be this way. And as she accepts that there are more ways to be Christian, she also begins to discover that there are more ways to be herself.
But when a member of the Catholic Society starts questioning if the Christian Fellowship that Lydia is a part of is as Christian as it claims, Lydia finds herself part of a row that will not remain confined to the campus of Stancester University.
Thanks a lot to Kathleen Jowitt for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.
I have to admit that I jumped at the opportunity to review this, because first of all, it is about queer practicing Christians, and second of all, I was curious to see how Lydia would come to terms with her sexuality and her faith.
I am a non-practicing Catholic myself and its been years since I even read the Bible, but Speak its Name made me get out my old Bible from school and cross check on the parts I could find. I really love it when books make me think, and this one made me really think about a lot of stuff in a way I haven't done before. I didn't really expect this when I started reading Speak its Name, but I'm actually glad it happened.
What I also loved about it was the way Jowitt described uni life. It was really well done, and I had to think back to my own uni days a lot. In a funny coincidence all the talk about walking down a hill from campus to walk up another hill kept making me think of my own way between my house and campus the last year of uni, so in my mind Stancester probably looks more like Aberystwyth than it's supposed to be.
I also really enjoyed the balance between the different elements of the story. It never really felt like either campus politics, faith or romance took over the story; it always felt like they were balanced out.
Speak its Name is a great read about faith and sexuality. It's a great exploration of what it means to accept two seemingly contradictory aspects of yourself, and what it means to do that.
____
Lydia Hawkins is an Evangelical Christian and a lesbian. Everyone knows the former, but no one can ever find out the latter.
But when she meets the inhabitants of 27 Alma Road, she starts to realise that maybe it doesn't have to be this way. And as she accepts that there are more ways to be Christian, she also begins to discover that there are more ways to be herself.
But when a member of the Catholic Society starts questioning if the Christian Fellowship that Lydia is a part of is as Christian as it claims, Lydia finds herself part of a row that will not remain confined to the campus of Stancester University.
Thanks a lot to Kathleen Jowitt for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.
I have to admit that I jumped at the opportunity to review this, because first of all, it is about queer practicing Christians, and second of all, I was curious to see how Lydia would come to terms with her sexuality and her faith.
I am a non-practicing Catholic myself and its been years since I even read the Bible, but Speak its Name made me get out my old Bible from school and cross check on the parts I could find. I really love it when books make me think, and this one made me really think about a lot of stuff in a way I haven't done before. I didn't really expect this when I started reading Speak its Name, but I'm actually glad it happened.
What I also loved about it was the way Jowitt described uni life. It was really well done, and I had to think back to my own uni days a lot. In a funny coincidence all the talk about walking down a hill from campus to walk up another hill kept making me think of my own way between my house and campus the last year of uni, so in my mind Stancester probably looks more like Aberystwyth than it's supposed to be.
I also really enjoyed the balance between the different elements of the story. It never really felt like either campus politics, faith or romance took over the story; it always felt like they were balanced out.
Speak its Name is a great read about faith and sexuality. It's a great exploration of what it means to accept two seemingly contradictory aspects of yourself, and what it means to do that.