MiniReview: "Learned by Heart" by Emma Donoghue

What is it?

A novel by Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue, first published in 2023.

 

What’s it about?

It’s a fictionalized account of the real-life historical love affair between Anne Lister, the famous nineteenth-century lesbian diarist, and Eliza Raine at a girls’ school in York, England, in 1805/6.

 

This is a lesbian novel? John, we almost never do those!!

I know, and I’m sorry. I do tend to be irresistibly drawn in by the powerful suction of male gay writing, particularly around AIDS. But I don’t mean to neglect the "L" in LGBTQ.

 

Apology accepted. But how do we even know about a lesbian affair at a girls’ school in 1805?

Emma Donoghue did a lot of research, which is outlined in an Author’s Note at the end of the book. As always in the nineteenth century, there was a lot of writing: diaries, letters, and so on. So we know it happened, and we know quite a lot about the two principal characters, but the details, of course, are invented.

 

So . . . ?

It’s really a lovely book, and it reads like fiction in the sense that it doesn’t seem hamstrung by over-research (although it clearly was meticulously researched). The characters of Anne and Eliza are vibrant and compelling, and the scenes of them with their fellow students at the school are often very funny. But there is such a beautiful tenderness in the portrayal of these two “outsiders” (Anne because she already knows she’s queer, and Eliza because she’s half-Indian and is thus seen as someone who can never fit in). But the writing is also very sensual and sexy! Lesbians do seem to have a lot of fun.

 

We’ll never know.

I guess.

 

Stars?

Two. A beautifully written, delicate, haunting true-life lesbian love story that also has much to say about colonialism and everyday genteel repression.