Queer

This is another one of those books, reserved at my library when I was on a search for lesbian fiction. I was very pleased that my library had Wildthorn – I don’t read much historical romance-y lesbian fiction, which is too bad. I should see if I can scare up some more!

Louisa is her father’s daughter – she’d like to be a boy, because boys have toy trains and get to play marbles and they go to school and learn real things as opposed to the things girls go to school to learn. Her father, a doctor, indulges her and keeps her home, hires a tutor and even takes her on rounds with him after she’s old enough to handle such things. Louisa wants nothing more than to be a doctor. She’s also in love with her cousin – Grace.

Which is all well and good until her father dies, leaving her brother head of the household. And her brother has issues. Issues with Louisa – a young woman who “apes men” – and personal issues that drive him to… well I won’t spoil it for you.

Before she knows it, Louisa is in an asylum and the staff is calling her Lucy. There are some nice twists at the end and an ending that I didn’t love because it was a little big predictable and too close to happily ever after for my tastes. Even though it wasn’t happily ever after in the same way it would have been if Louisa wasn’t a lesbian.

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After spending several days complaining about the lack of books to choose from, I decided to work on getting my library reserve list back up to speed. I started with my Amazon wish list – it’s not really a wish list, it’s a holding place for books we’re interested in reading but can’t add to the library reserve list because our list is already really long. Then, I looked over the books I’ve read this year and looked for sequels or prequels that I’d like to read and reserved those. Then I looked at the Amazon “best of 2010” lists because I was really hoping to add some quality adult books – or maybe just adult books – or maybe just quality books. I don’t know – something that’s not too chick lit-y and something that’s not to YA-y. Then, I decided to look for some good lesbian literature and that’s where my frustration really began.

I sorted the Amazon lists by bestsellers, lesbian fiction, hardcover (because I was getting too many small publishers/self puplishers in the list and my library won’t have any of those) – only to find… my library has none of the 2010 lesbian fiction hardcover bestsellers… or worse yet, the bestsellers are all old… or lesbian detective mysteries. I like Jane Lawless but please, enough is enough. I wanted something else… something better.

It was late. I gave up for the night and decided I’d approach it from the women’s/lesbian bookstore direction and assumed I’d have more luck. I went to bed, without a book, and complained to TW about the problem. She said, “that book I just read is a library book – and it’s lesbian fiction.” Huh. Who knew?

Mirabilis is lesbian fiction, though it doesn’t really flaunt it and that’s the problem – there are a lot of great lesbian novels out there but for some reason publishers, authors, booksellers don’t want to label a book as lesbian fiction. (I wonder why… hahahaha)

Mirabilis is a story of a 14^th century wet nurse who saves a town during a time of famine by feeding them all via her breasts, (well not all of them, she doesn’t allow the truly evil to nurse.) She’s able to do this because a rich pregnant widow is feeding her real, good food to make sure her milk is good enough for the soon to be born heir. A relationship develops between the wet nurse and the rich widow… gasp, a lesbian relationship!

Funny what you stumble upon when you don’t expect it.

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