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A review by em_reads_books
A Thin Bright Line by Lucy Jane Bledsoe
5.0
Compelling - I was itching the whole time to get to the postscript and learn how much was real and how the author learned what she learned - and infused with both anxiety and hope throughout. The oppression of the McCarthy era slowly giving way to a more open and liberated time. Fantastic historical fiction in that it shows us how an ordinary person's life could be made so extraordinary by the scientific progress and social changes it intersected with, and in that it fills in the queerness that is too often erased from the official archive. The fact that the author had to dig so deeply to discover what she shared with her aunt is a testament to how damaging that erasure is.
Highly recommended if you don't mind stories without much of a plot - like a real life, this narrative meanders through relationships and everyday drama without fitting neatly into an arc. (I loved the occasional references to the pulpy lesbian tragedy novels of the time, paralleling the tragic ending of Lucybelle's story and reminding us that the joy before the inevitable end is the part we're reading for.)
My one disappointment is that a major character - one of the more complex and fascinating ones - doesn't get her due in the postscript. How real was she, in Lucybelle's life or as another someone who may have existed? What did the author know about her community and how it intersected with Lucybelle's?
Highly recommended if you don't mind stories without much of a plot - like a real life, this narrative meanders through relationships and everyday drama without fitting neatly into an arc. (I loved the occasional references to the pulpy lesbian tragedy novels of the time, paralleling the tragic ending of Lucybelle's story and reminding us that the joy before the inevitable end is the part we're reading for.)
My one disappointment is that a major character - one of the more complex and fascinating ones - doesn't get her due in the postscript. How real was she, in Lucybelle's life or as another someone who may have existed? What did the author know about her community and how it intersected with Lucybelle's?