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A review by emmaliborski
After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
This is completely unlike anything I've ever read. It's a series of poetic vignettes that weaves together the lives and works of real queer female artists and revolutionaries in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. If you try to grasp too firmly onto the historical reality of this novel and focus on keeping all of the characters, relationships, and timelines straight in your head, this will be a headache of a read. I found that surrendering to the language and the intended flow of the book made the reading experience almost magical and reverent.
This is definitely a love-it-or-hate-it kind of book- a lot of people won't like the quasi-academic form it takes. My only disappointment was how it ended with a whimper, not a bang. I didn't get a sense of why the book ended when it did in the timeline. Regardless, this novel is the result of what I'm sure was a Herculean research effort and a remarkable amount of creativity and I'm deeply impressed by it.
"An invert is not exactly someone thought backwards. An invert is someone thought in a different order. A part that others might display on the outside, like a bronze breastplate, is instead kept chambered in the heart. Or inverts may have their warmest parts turned outwards, like orchids or octopuses.
In Fragment 51 Sappho writes of two states of mind in the same body. When two things are coupled together in one throat, in one belly, in one blush of feeling that runs up the spine, they orient the body in different directions at the same time. We were well acquainted with that warm disarray spreading through our nerves. Sometimes we wanted to be everything at once. An invert is someone who believes this is possible."
This is definitely a love-it-or-hate-it kind of book- a lot of people won't like the quasi-academic form it takes. My only disappointment was how it ended with a whimper, not a bang. I didn't get a sense of why the book ended when it did in the timeline. Regardless, this novel is the result of what I'm sure was a Herculean research effort and a remarkable amount of creativity and I'm deeply impressed by it.
"An invert is not exactly someone thought backwards. An invert is someone thought in a different order. A part that others might display on the outside, like a bronze breastplate, is instead kept chambered in the heart. Or inverts may have their warmest parts turned outwards, like orchids or octopuses.
In Fragment 51 Sappho writes of two states of mind in the same body. When two things are coupled together in one throat, in one belly, in one blush of feeling that runs up the spine, they orient the body in different directions at the same time. We were well acquainted with that warm disarray spreading through our nerves. Sometimes we wanted to be everything at once. An invert is someone who believes this is possible."