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A review by lizshayne
The Wife in the Attic by Rose Lerner
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
OBVIOUSLY Jane Eyre should be rewritten as a lesbian gothic romance. Just...obviously. It works so incredibly well and it invites so many options to comment narratively on the original text.
This book is an exploration of female power(ful|less)ness and the ways in which a woman can lose herself and regain herself. It's about female anger and it's also—despite being set in the 19th century—a post-holocaust book in the way its Jewish characters think about death and revenge and what it means to live.
The book forces you to look at what Rochester did, in a way similar to what Jean Rhys did, but with a very different lens because it is also a contemporary romance novel and must play by the rules of the genre.
Which means it's also a book about two women falling in love.
———
Anyway, so about theories of romance novels. Friends and I were discussing the lack of fluffy wlw romance novels and...this is definitely not a fluffy story.
And it's not like being gay was a walk in the park when this story was set and it's not like there isn't a happy ending, but somehow...threats to gay men in historical novels are fundamentally systemic. They are in danger if someone finds out. They're rarely personal. There's never a person — parent or guardian or suitor or spouse — who has power as an individual to make their life a living hell. It's always the power of the state amorphous that is the threat. For women, the threat is always individual This man. This father. This fiance. Not to ruin, but to utterly control. Which means lesbian romance novels are somehow always about breaking control and that's not particularly...fluffy, I guess.
Anyway, taking recs of books I have not already read that are fluffy f/f romance, preferably not YA. And also I have to think about this more.
This book is an exploration of female power(ful|less)ness and the ways in which a woman can lose herself and regain herself. It's about female anger and it's also—despite being set in the 19th century—a post-holocaust book in the way its Jewish characters think about death and revenge and what it means to live.
The book forces you to look at what Rochester did, in a way similar to what Jean Rhys did, but with a very different lens because it is also a contemporary romance novel and must play by the rules of the genre.
Which means it's also a book about two women falling in love.
———
Anyway, so about theories of romance novels. Friends and I were discussing the lack of fluffy wlw romance novels and...this is definitely not a fluffy story.
And it's not like being gay was a walk in the park when this story was set and it's not like there isn't a happy ending, but somehow...threats to gay men in historical novels are fundamentally systemic. They are in danger if someone finds out. They're rarely personal. There's never a person — parent or guardian or suitor or spouse — who has power as an individual to make their life a living hell. It's always the power of the state amorphous that is the threat. For women, the threat is always individual This man. This father. This fiance. Not to ruin, but to utterly control. Which means lesbian romance novels are somehow always about breaking control and that's not particularly...fluffy, I guess.
Anyway, taking recs of books I have not already read that are fluffy f/f romance, preferably not YA. And also I have to think about this more.