a shore thing (2024)
Aug. 13th, 2024 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porticomy work gets the new york times, and i dutifully read each book world on monday mornings, partially for work and partially for myself. i love that the times has a romance reviewer now (i can still remember the DRAMA that erupted in romancelandia--not that we called it that then--when smart bitches, trashy books launched), and i love to read those reviews, but rarely do i actually read those books (a me problem, mostly! i do think the current trend in cartoony covers is objectively bad). but i'm very glad i read the most recent review, because it was there i learned about A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell which, punny title and cartoon cover aside, was fantastic.
a shore thing is set in the 1880s in st. ives in cornwall, england. it's about murial pendrake, a botanist and plant hunter who is there to collect seaweed specimens and attempt to persuade local artist kit griffith to do paint the specimens for a presentation. for himself, kit relocated to st. ives for the light (long beloved by artists) but has since lost the ability to paint and has opened a bicycle shop instead. they meet when kit crashes his bicycle to avoid colliding with murial.
there's a lot of really delicious historical stuff happening in this book. i love the bicycle element, a still-new technology which does a good job of setting a scene of a society actively undergoing change, and the ways in which women are seeing the opportunities for more freedom within the change while men are still drawing lines in the sand preventing them from taking advantage. there's talk of pre-raphaelites, women making inroads in art academies, and growing communities of sapphists. these are all things that i have read extensively about, and it was a treat for me specifically to encounter them.
kit is what we would now call trans, and the conflict at the heart of his character is between the groups he found belonging with in the past--sapphists and sisterhoods--and the person he knows himself to be--unquestionably male. he's also a rake, which is frankly wonderful. i loved that at no point does the book allow to to be in doubt that guy is hot as hell, knows it, and is very willing to use that to his advantage. murial is certainly never in doubt about it.
murial herself is less complicated a character but no less interesting. she is curious and ambitious and utterly bloody-minded (she agrees to take part in a multi-day bicycle tour despite having never ridden before and explains that she'll certainly complete it because she's just not somebody who gives up on things). her best friend is a gay man, but aside from him she hasn't had any experience with queer people. she's trying her best with kit, and it rings very true. also: the sex is great. really hot and really respectful of kit which is, in its way, also really hot.
i liked this book a whole lot. it's fun and funny (i haven't even mentioned the "mutton wheelers" bicycle club) and navigates around some really terrible realities of being queer or a woman or a queer woman in19th century england with a deftness that never dips into hopelessness. i can see there being complaints about the unproblematic-ness of characters--murial and kit are aware of and disapproving of the imperial project, for example, in a way that feels more 21st century than 19th century. but i let it slide because at least that anachronism and others are definitely coming from a place of scholarship rather than, say, performative social media purity. i was not surprised when i reached the end and discovered that the book was written in close collaboration with a queer historian, Mir Yarfitz, who is also trans and Lowell's partner.
great stuff. there is, perhaps, hope for romance yet. (maybe. if they kill the cartoons.)
a shore thing is set in the 1880s in st. ives in cornwall, england. it's about murial pendrake, a botanist and plant hunter who is there to collect seaweed specimens and attempt to persuade local artist kit griffith to do paint the specimens for a presentation. for himself, kit relocated to st. ives for the light (long beloved by artists) but has since lost the ability to paint and has opened a bicycle shop instead. they meet when kit crashes his bicycle to avoid colliding with murial.
there's a lot of really delicious historical stuff happening in this book. i love the bicycle element, a still-new technology which does a good job of setting a scene of a society actively undergoing change, and the ways in which women are seeing the opportunities for more freedom within the change while men are still drawing lines in the sand preventing them from taking advantage. there's talk of pre-raphaelites, women making inroads in art academies, and growing communities of sapphists. these are all things that i have read extensively about, and it was a treat for me specifically to encounter them.
kit is what we would now call trans, and the conflict at the heart of his character is between the groups he found belonging with in the past--sapphists and sisterhoods--and the person he knows himself to be--unquestionably male. he's also a rake, which is frankly wonderful. i loved that at no point does the book allow to to be in doubt that guy is hot as hell, knows it, and is very willing to use that to his advantage. murial is certainly never in doubt about it.
murial herself is less complicated a character but no less interesting. she is curious and ambitious and utterly bloody-minded (she agrees to take part in a multi-day bicycle tour despite having never ridden before and explains that she'll certainly complete it because she's just not somebody who gives up on things). her best friend is a gay man, but aside from him she hasn't had any experience with queer people. she's trying her best with kit, and it rings very true. also: the sex is great. really hot and really respectful of kit which is, in its way, also really hot.
i liked this book a whole lot. it's fun and funny (i haven't even mentioned the "mutton wheelers" bicycle club) and navigates around some really terrible realities of being queer or a woman or a queer woman in19th century england with a deftness that never dips into hopelessness. i can see there being complaints about the unproblematic-ness of characters--murial and kit are aware of and disapproving of the imperial project, for example, in a way that feels more 21st century than 19th century. but i let it slide because at least that anachronism and others are definitely coming from a place of scholarship rather than, say, performative social media purity. i was not surprised when i reached the end and discovered that the book was written in close collaboration with a queer historian, Mir Yarfitz, who is also trans and Lowell's partner.
great stuff. there is, perhaps, hope for romance yet. (maybe. if they kill the cartoons.)
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Date: 2024-08-13 08:50 pm (UTC)This book sounds cute AF, I might have to give it a try.
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Date: 2024-08-19 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-16 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-19 03:30 pm (UTC)