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I read this book in my twenties, but managed to completely erase any memory of it. It isn't just that I didn't remember the plot: I didn't even retain a vague impression of what it was like for me to read it. This time around, my mind was blown. Perhaps even more blown because I read the book before and after going to see the play that has been showing at the ITA.

I don't want to draw a point by point comparison, because that will feel like I'm dissing the play, which is a perfectly enjoyable adaptation, with some very hot dances. The main issue may be that, if one looks only at the plot, the book is a crazy over-the-top gay melodrama. But, Baldwin being Baldwin, it manages to also be a very nuanced book about masculinity, sexuality and inequalities - in the best, non-didactic possible way. The notion of 'being out' is refracted through the different characters. The wealthy older men in the book, Jacques and Guillame, can afford to be 'out', but pay a high price, despised by everyone, including David and Giovanni. They are also creepy af. Giovanni is out enough to admit he is in a desperate sort of love with David, but his courage that seems to be born out of loneliness and alienation. There is nothing 'gay' about him. He despises the effeminate men praying on boys in the bars, and prefers to take refuge in his room. As a poor Italian migrant Giovanni is clearly racialised in David's eyes, not quite Black, but not white either, and class and race arguably are as much of an obstacle to this doomed love. And doomed it certainly is, relentlessly so. Every sentence is beautiful and terrible.

Despite its title, this book is only approximately 20% of lesbian novel. The rest is "high brow author reflecting on her creative process in a fictionalized interview form", which is about as bad as it sounds. To be fair to the author, the format works in as far as it forces one (i.e. me) to long for the lesbian novel bits in order to find out what happens, and also to enjoy some vicarious sex/romance. That's an interesting literary device, but not enough to sustain a book.

I have low patience for artists talking about being artists in general terms, and found the interview bits fairly pretentious and boring. This especially stood out because the author is clearly ambivalent about lesbian romance novels: I had the feeling that she wants to like them, knows that not liking them is uncool [controversial opinion: nothing wrong with disliking them, you do you Renee], but somehow cannot get pass the fact that she doesn't. So, she feels self-conscious about her romance writing, constantly wants to interject, justify, self-deprecate, let us know she knows better than that...when it's the other 80% of the book that needs some more self-awareness. Harsh, I know. The author does sound lovely though, and I hear some people enjoyed it.

In this age of aggressive queer-baiting and pink-washing, sometimes I hear that 'representation is important' and want to bang my head against the wall. Fuck representation. I really do not need a Disney princess to look like me, thank you very much. Then I come across a book like this, clearly written by a queer person for queer people because of a genuine desire to share, and I calm down. Because it is of course important to feel not-alone.

What can I say, I love A.K. Summers, I want her to be my friend and build shelves together. She is an old-style butch lady, part of an identity group that is almost disappearing. She knows it and mourns it in the book, at times perhaps coming a bit close to a 'why does gender have to be so complicated' stance, or at least a 'youth these days' stance, but she is saved but what seems like an honest sense of curiosity and openness to try and learn why fewer younger people feel able or willing to identify as masculine women, a desire I see expressed through the list of reading recommendations at the end of the book.

I also love the book's graphic style. It really has the vibe of a DIY internet strip, seeming rough and ready compared to the many recent graphic novels where every single frame could become a picture to hang on the wall, and every detail is carefully thought through.

Butch pregnancy sounds tough, but in the way many things in many lives are tough. A.K. Summers if freaked out by her body, feels lonely, is in pain, doesn't feel up to the task - all things that are surely related to her gender identity but also probably quite common, if unspoken, experiences for pregnant people? In one of the last spreads, she's giving birth and imagines herself on a jumping board, realising that whether she jumps or not, she's going fall: she no longer needs to feel she won't be able to do it, because she's in the middle of it and there is no stopping it.

This book is pretty unique, I'll give it that. I did love the language, which is poetic and raw, queer in the best kind of way. Even though it is generally not my style, I also enjoyed being carried through this journey, sentence after sentence, without the need to fully understand every sentence, of knowing what happens at which point in the story, where a character comes from and how they end up.

Is Eileen incredibly pretentious when it comes to poetry? Hell yes. Is it yet another book by a writer enamored with the myth of their own creative bubble, and very proud of having hung out with the right crowds, doing drugs and having sex in New York? Also yes. Does Eileen, who strike me as a really sweet person, come across as a touch navel-gazing and emotionally unavailable (with one exception, Rosie the dog, that was adorable)? Absolutely. Do they seem to have a sense of humour about it? To be fair, yes they do.

The word matrescence makes me think of a growing appendage, a bulbous tentacle shooting off from someone’s side. It is however, a -scence as in adolescence, not excrescence: a phase of change in a person’s life. The book’s story is that becoming a mother is a tremendous change, physically, psychologically and socially, and not enough fuss is made about. Maybe this is because of a collective effort to undervalue women’s contributions, skills and sufferings, maybe because of a paternalistic sense that not talking about the most gruesome and taxing aspects of motherhoods will mean more women sign up for it. So far, so good.

The book waves together accounts of scientific research on the topic, some literature-informed reflections on the social structures of motherhood, bits of her personal experience as a mother of three, and sketches of motherhood in the animal kingdom. I enjoyed these different ingredients to different degrees. The author is a science journalist, meaning she’s pretty good at explaining biological research, but I did wish for more depth and details: just when things were becoming interesting, she would move on to a different topic. I may be a harsh critique on the social science front, but these pages felt too superficial, and maybe like she did her homework but didn’t have anything original to say about them. Her personal experience sections were…a roller coaster. Depending on the topic, I alternative thought that she was able to articulate my own fears, that she is a straight lady and god have mercy on them, or that she was genuinely in need of help and should be urgently talking to a counselor (a personal one, but also a marriage one!) rather than writing a book.

This sounds like a mean review, and I don’t mean it. Motherhood does sound tough and it is certainly good that someone writes about this. Plus, I’m sorry, Lucy Jones, that you had to go through all of this.

I read this book years ago and, if you had asked me, I would have said it's a book about Kay's experience growing up black in Scotland, and then embarking on a quest to trace her birth parents. I suppose this is more or less what the official blurb suggests. On this second read, I found that these two threads are kind of secondary, and the book could instead be described as an exploration of what it means to be a daughter. Kay loves her adoptive parents to bits, and that love really shapes her memory of the past (the way they stood up for her in every way they could), her experience of the present (her conflicting emotions meeting her birth parents and coming to terms with how insubstantial a relation based on genetics is), and her outlook on the future (as she sees herself taking on more and more of a caring role in relation to her aging mum and dad). In many ways, the book is not particular complex in its plot, language or insights, but it just gives one a warm feeling, and Kay seems so fucking lovely!