ralentina reviewed Orlanda by Ros Schwartz
On the Orlando train
4 stars
Another Orlando-inspired novel, straight after Andrea Lawlor's, this time setting out to interrogate what gets lost when one is socialised as female. The protagonist, a slightly uptight university professor of literature, struggles to read Virginia Wolf, which she accuses of being mortally boring. Until the unruly part of her decides to escape, taking the form of a boy. The two half of the selves are gendered in a bit of a conventional, essentialist way, but of course the fact that they are both within her makes it more interesting. To my taste, the writing verged on the erudite-for-erudite sake, but with a hint of self-irony about that too. Often, that humorous touch was provided by the ominiscent narrator, who, unfortunately, had decided it wasn't becoming to describe the sexual encounters of the escapee who, keen to act on decades of repressed desire, loved to cruise (while disappointing while reading, …
Another Orlando-inspired novel, straight after Andrea Lawlor's, this time setting out to interrogate what gets lost when one is socialised as female. The protagonist, a slightly uptight university professor of literature, struggles to read Virginia Wolf, which she accuses of being mortally boring. Until the unruly part of her decides to escape, taking the form of a boy. The two half of the selves are gendered in a bit of a conventional, essentialist way, but of course the fact that they are both within her makes it more interesting. To my taste, the writing verged on the erudite-for-erudite sake, but with a hint of self-irony about that too. Often, that humorous touch was provided by the ominiscent narrator, who, unfortunately, had decided it wasn't becoming to describe the sexual encounters of the escapee who, keen to act on decades of repressed desire, loved to cruise (while disappointing while reading, I can see this was probably a reasonably choice on the part of an author who, likely, has never gone cruising). As an aside, this is the straightest book with a gay protagonist I have ever read (not in a bad way).