Renée Vivien was a British poet who wrote in the French language. A high-profile lesbian writer in Paris during the Belle Époque era, she is widely considered to be one of the first noteworthy lesbian poets of the twentieth century.
She who remains, Rene Karabash (2020, translated by Izidora Angel)
She Who Remains, Rene Karabash’s landmark Bulgarian queer novel, secrets readers into a rural Albanian village where, to this day, the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini—a collection of archaic laws—looms over the lives of villagers with the same haunting presence of the surrounding mountains. Bekija, painfully aware of why she cannot have what she most wants, chooses to become a “sworn virgin,” setting off a bloody and heartbreaking chain of events that shatters a family and destroys a cherished relationship, but also reveals how trauma can lead to vital, if uncomfortable, truths. Karabash’s poetic stream of consciousness traces gender evolution with innovative grace. This bold exploration of what it means to be a woman in a world defined by the violence of ancient patriarchal traditions has resonated with readers across Europe and beyond, and now English-language readers won’t soon forget Izidora Angel’s award-winning translation.
Review
I am both amazed and left wondering after closing this very short book.
I knew the main plot when I picked it up, and it sounded really intriguing to me. I had heard about the tradition of sworn virgins in Albania before but had yet to read about them and how it worked. On that end, I felt the novel encompassed well the complexity of this tradition, and what it implies for the people living with it in current society. This felt heart wrenching and at the same time entirely too plausible, which made it way worse.
I became strangely attached very quickly to the narrator, and understood her pov very early on, making me very invested in the follow up of the story. And it really didn't disappoint. There's a lot going on, playing with the narrative structure (who tells the truth? Between the narrator and her brother's letters... Which she can't read D:), with her fears, and her emotions. It was really filled with ups and downs and I did not dare hope at the end (although I was right to !). The only thing I resent in the story (and I've posted about it for a bit because it's truly something I can't handle very well at all) is the surprise (not a spoiler) twin mention in the book. For personal reasons I'm really sensitive to stories involving twins and.... let's just say this one did not disappoint on that end :') I still loved the book but I really hated a certain section towards the end (If you read it you'll understand). If you're sensitive to such a topic and how it deals with the concept of twins, read this book carefully? Idk what else to tell you. I can always "spoil" it via DMs if you're intrigued.
In the end I still ended up liking this novel. I'm not sure whether I can say I loved it though. The story arcs, the characters were spot on, but... the overall writing style didn't really do it for me.
I think what took me the most of getting used to was in fact the language structure. It clearly tries to read like the audio interview of someone at most times, and like poetry at others. I'm saying "try" because while I got used to the oral style, I found the sentences neverending at first, and I had a hard time understanding where it was going. What was real and what wasn't. I get the artistic aspect of it but it did leave me questioning what I was reading more times than not. The poetry parts inserted in between left me unaffected, and didn't feel coherent to the rest of the writing, so...
I do have to say, my criticism might stem from the fact that I might be more aware now of how such a style can work. Having read another novel with an oral style earlier this year (Mother Naked, which I really recommend - absolute blast of a story and narrative), She who remains felt more laborious.
All in all the story was really interesting and well handled, I loved it (apart from that one part about the twin), but the writing didn't quite work for me. I still recommend it, if only for its original theme and how it's handled!
😭I know it will sound strange to a lot of people but I really wished there was like a warning or something when a book concerns twins. especially when it's about the death of one of them
the words disappeared with Dhana and my brother, as did all the books from which she read to me during the summer vacations, when they left me, I stopped my Albanian lessons, I can't write, I can't read, I've read the most beautiful books in the world through Dhana's eyes...
a lot of people wanted to know what shirley jackson meant with this story. she told all who asked different meanings; it’s about small town life, the holocaust, antisemitism, the myth of the scapegoat… she told one high school student: “if you can’t figure it out, i’m not going to tell you.”
she approved one message to be published in the the new yorker, written by a young kip orr;
As a college student in London during the bitterly cold winter of 1944, Red falls in love with her married classmate Mara. Their affair unleashes a physical passion, jealousy, and self-doubt that sweep all her previous experiences aside and will leave her changed forever.
Set against the rubble of the bombed city, in a time of gray austerity and deprivation, Winter Love recalls a life at its most vivid. “Probably the best thing she has ever written” (Daily Telegraph), it is also Han Suyin’s most unexpected, tender, and stirring work.
Review
During this month of June, I wanted to go back for a while to lesbian literature, which tells about what being a lesbian can be like, what it is like to love a woman when you're a woman yourself. I haven't read many (nothing new to people who've followed me for a while), but between a fantasy set in medieval China (She Who Became the Sun) and Winter Love, I feel like I've traveled the great scope of lesbian literature, and it was a pleasure.
As I said before, I wanted to read about what it's like to love a woman when you're a woman yourself. I wanted the exploration of such feelings, in societies where they're not allowed to even be.
I don't think this is what I got with Winter Love, and at the same time, it is exactly what I should have expected. This book is, in a way, about love, otherwise the title would be slightly misleading. But it's also about a time, and a place, where two women couldn't really love each other without it becoming a shame, for themselves or for their relatives. And the winter of the title takes quite a few meanings as you go, and go.
Winter Love starts with Bettina, also called Red, at her college, who falls for Mara, beautiful and classy and mysterious Mara. Her classmate, who happens to be ... married. Already, you can see the pieces placed on the board.
But still, Red falls for her. She observes her, becomes fascinated by her, and, as they begin to walk each other home, and as they start to have something, their love comes. And what a beautiful thing it is: sweet, slow, all in subtle touches and words... But the social pressure linked to their relationship, the mere fact of being two women actually in love, builds on the characters as their love grows. And Red, the narrator, now older as she tells this story, is quite frank about it : she was regularly beastly with Mara. Why? Well. There may be many reasons, and if you read this novella you might find some of them, but, at times, isn't it easier to be harsh than to be true?
I'm not going to tell you all. I've barely scratched the surface as it is. But here is what you should know: Winter Love is a sensitive love story, set in the British society of the 1940s, where two women try to exist and love as they want. It's marvelous at times, downright awful at others (our two lovers have a way to hurt each other, and Red is especially good at being mean). The writing was really great for that. It expressed so much, with very few words. I especially enjoyed the way society seemed to vanish around them, and then comes back to bite at them, more populated with many characters getting involved and inserting themselves between them. The entire story was so well-crafted, I was holding my breath by the time I reached the ending.
I'm not going to lie, Winter Love doesn't end in a sweet love story. I feel like, in queer literature at the very least, it's an important thing to know before you go into a novel. Life is already hard enough as it is if you're part of the community, I'd feel bad if you went into Winter Love thinking it would end in a "happily ever after" for the characters. It doesn't. But their story feels like an important story to tell. It feels real, and for a while, their love was true, and it was there.
The ending was really something that shook me, because it ends softly, almost without a sound. It is disturbing, but I feel it representative of many a lesbian love story that never got to grow and safely and truly discover itself for what it was.
To understand one must undergo, and I was not imaginative enough, the capacity to love had been wrung out of me quite early, as it is out of many of us.
- Winter Love (1962), Han Suyin
Summer is nearing where I live, and I've been listening to a vid where a french reader takes almost an hour to explain how she went into reading Marcel Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu / In Search of Lost Time, and what it gave her to take the time to read it in its entirety.
La Recherche is very well-known in France, also very much massive, and yet lots of people take pride in having read it and finished it. It is certainly representative of French literature at the time in which it was written. But it also seems to require from its readers intense focus and many deep dives.
I've been wondering about reading it... But if I'm here telling you about it, it's mainly because I also keep on thinking that maybe there are other massive classics requiring just as much time and focus to understand them, from other countries, which could bring me more in terms of reading than this serie.
Consider this a call for help : if you have any recommendations for similarly literary massive enterprise as La Recherche, please, share them ! Change the course of my life (or at least my summer) !
Jean Valjean is so funny; I love him. What do you mean Javert was able to track him down because he couldn't help himself from giving away so much money that everyone started talking about it? And this is the second time this has happened?
Should I be asked now what I wanted of life. I would say, 'Happiness, I suppose,' then add quickly: 'But I'm quite happy, you know. A good husband, a child... If I were to tell the truth, that their existence, my family's being in my proximity, remains vague to me as tombstones of strangers in a common cemetery, that only a certain winter exists for me, vivid and clear, surging with life, and that all else is neutral, formless, indifferent, people would think me queer.
And I thought this face held all I meant of happiness... until I lost it, and the loss would burn in me slowly, like a cigarette-burn spreading, sloven-sure.
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