A review by breanneporter
Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I struggled through the first half, which I found very tedious and dull, but I’m really glad I persevered, as I really liked the second half. This is the fictionalized account of Eliza Raine and Anne Lister, who met and fell in love in English boarding school when they were only 14. It made me want to try to watch gentleman jack again (I watched one season but there was so much about her coal business and not enough lesbian fuckboy shenanigans, which is obvs why I was there). It’s tragic but beautiful, as are most tales of lesbian love before modern times, and If you can suffer through the tedium of the schoolgirls’ daily schedules and family lineages that make up the bulk of the first half, you’re in for a beautiful and emotional story of the intensity of first love. 

I’m still thinking about
how Raine didn’t want to think there were other sapphic couplings (like I thought she would have) and instead described their love as their own invention - I just love that positive reframing of the fact that lesbian love was so unseen and undiscussed (and criminalized), to believe they had discovered, for the first time maybe, something so beautiful and life altering.
I think I’ll be thinking of that, and Anne and Eliza in general, for a while longer. 
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