Sylvia BrownriggRecensioni

Oh look, another LGBT novel! Are we surprised? At this point, if you are, then you haven’t been following me for long enough…
This novel caught my attention at first, and the first half of it was spectacular. Flannery is a writer who became famous with her debut novel, but her second novel unfortunately tanked. She’s a mother to a very sweet little girl and married to a bombastic, larger-than-life artist who is a bit too egotistical for my liking. She’s experiencing writer’s block, and has been for a while, and is pleasantly surprised when she’s invited to a seminar as a guest speaker at her alma mater. And then she’s even more pleasantly surprised when she realizes that the keynote speaker is her old flame, Anne.
The novel is split into three parts, the first and third part being told by Flannery and the middle part being told by Anne. They met when Flannery was a student and Anne was a post-graduate in the same department, and they very quickly fell in messy, heated love. Unfortunately, it only lasts a few months, and soon they part ways. And years later, this seminar is them meeting again.
You would expect that their reunion would be wonderful, full of amazing scenes and would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Instead, it’s just so…anticlimactic.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the trope – lovers meet after years apart and reconcile. But it’s just so boring. There could have been so much to this story beyond what it gave me and I was expecting so much more. Maybe it’s just being realistic in the way it shows how sometimes you just want one night with the person who you used to love to get closure and that’s it. But the way that the story builds up to that moment and the way that Anne and Flannery talk to each other just makes you believe that their love was a timeless affair that crosses boundaries. When all it was, in the end, was a fling.
So yeah. This could have been better.
I give it a 3/5. But, you should still read it, because we all need more queer stories in our lives.

This book came highly recommended. It was one of those books that leaves you with an inexplicable feeling rather than a set of characters and plot. More like a soothing jazz ensemble, this book is a book for those who want to discover or relive the first taste of infatuation.

Atmospheric, charming, romantic. The cover makes it seem more explicit than it is.

From the moment this book arrived in the mail it felt like a gift. I took it out of its cell-wrap envelope and noticed at once the beautiful paper: thick, textured. It smelled nice. Open it. The stories unfold one after another, separated by contemporary art that also folds out, spills out from the borders of the book--clouds, mostly, and skyscapes, and landscapes that are arresting and disturbing, both at once, much like the stories between the art. Indeed reading this, turning the pages, felt much like visiting an art gallery. I've used that metaphor for reading before, here. But in this case I mean it quite literally: this book is a work of art to be held in your two hands, and turning its pages is an act of sensual discovery that goes beyond story and touches me in ways beyond the words on the page.

The seven stories here are perfect recreations, for me, of the disorientation I have often felt, while traveling, as a relatively wealthy (white) woman who has come to a less-wealthy-less-white part of the world. The solitary female traveler in these stories is confident enough to travel alone, and yet she never escapes the feeling that something bad is about to happen. The stories capture the anxiety of being new to a place, while not having enough knowledge to be able to know just what level of danger you are in.

The effect of reading this small book is one of profound disorientation, a kind of disorientation that made me feel very alert as a reader. Every word and moment mattered. It was not like reading at all. It was as if the book was recreating a feeling in me, inviting me to fully remember a feeling I've have often had when traveling, and have always tried to push past and move on from, instead of learning from it.

Pages for Her is a love story about two fully realized women who loved one another passionately many years ago, and who have the opportunity to meet again after two decades of life and career choices have kept them apart.

Flannery and Anne are intellectual, thinking people; they are mature and thoughtful of others; they understand the nature of obligation and respect and promises. The depth of their self-awareness informs their relationship in unexpectedly moving ways. I felt I was being told the story of two real people, feeling real love.

There is so much to this story. I loved the way Flannery understands and accepts her marriage to a flawed man. I love Flannery's love for her daughter Willa. I love the way Anne has compartmentalized her long-ago relationship with Flannery and needs to re-discover just how much Flannery meant to her, long ago. I love the way Anne's lover has left her for a real and human reason--the desire to have children--rather than some other, more fictional reason. Brownrigg populates her fictional world with living people rather than just focusing on the women's love for one another in isolation. It makes this a complicated and interesting book, without easy answers.

So beautiful. I was crying by the end.

I checked this book out from the library when I was a freshman in high school, but I was too uncomfortable with my own sexuality to read it. Now, five years later, I found this book again and sat down to read it slowly. This is a gorgeous love story... I recommend it for women who love women and books ;)

I heard the author interviewed on a Guardian podcast and I liked her, and what she said made me think I would like this pair of stories. This one became available in my local library first so I've read it before having read "Pages for You". I'd have to say I was a little disappointed, but maybe I was expecting too much. I was initially shocked that the librarians had labelled this as "romance" (I go close to this genre but try to keep out of it) but now I think maybe they're right. Certainly the writing seemed somewhat pretentious to me and a little too embellished. Moreover, the overall story seemed unrealistic in its portrayal of two women meeting again many years after a passionate affair. I was disturbed by the women's sexuality, switching between male and female partners with apparently little internal conflict - I'm not sure that such 'simple' people exist in reality. I don't think their portrayed inner lives were entirely consistent with their outer world. I expected more inner turmoil from Flannery, at least...but maybe I'm the one who's out of touch with reality? Anyway, I'm now not sure whether I want to read "Pages for You".....

[review coming soon! :)]

I just finished reading Pages For You and I am surprised I had never heard of it before. I mean, I understand there is still that stigma associated with the LGBT community and for that reason books with LGBT couples are not commonly read in high schools. However, with time that will change and I can definitely see thus becoming part of curriculum. Its storyline and character depth as well as the way it is written reminded me greatly of the classics I read in high school, like Catcher In the Rye and The Bell Jar. I believe Flannery and I would be great friends. get to know her by reading this great work of fiction by author Sylvia Brownrigg.

I just finished reading Pages For You and I am surprised I had never heard of it before. I mean, I understand there is still that stigma associated with the LGBT community and for that reason books with LGBT couples are not commonly read in high schools. However, with time that will change and I can definitely see thus becoming part of curriculum. Its storyline and character depth as well as the way it is written reminded me greatly of the classics I read in high school, like Catcher In the Rye and The Bell Jar. I believe Flannery and I would be great friends. get to know her by reading this great work of fiction by author Sylvia Brownrigg.

I just finished reading Pages For You and I am surprised I had never heard of it before. I mean, I understand there is still that stigma associated with the LGBT community and for that reason books with LGBT couples are not commonly read in high schools. However, with time that will change and I can definitely see thus becoming part of curriculum. Its storyline and character depth as well as the way it is written reminded me greatly of the classics I read in high school, like Catcher In the Rye and The Bell Jar. I believe Flannery and I would be great friends. get to know her by reading this great work of fiction by author Sylvia Brownrigg.

In response to a simple adverb phrase found on page 17 (“emerald mockery”), I wrote this in my marginalia:

Bloody genius. The mockery of her eyes. Deeper level of meaning: she hasn’t witnessed it but she desires it! Difficult to set up even in a narrative. Even more difficult: forcing the reader to pull out and analyse an adverb!

Generally I’d never bother with such in depth annotation on a single two word phrase, preferring instead to look at the piece objectively as a whole when and if I review it. In truth, my notes on Brownrigg’s “Pages for You” have ended up filling several pages, with a great deal more left uncommented, but for which I chose instead to just use highlighter for future reference and inspiration.

Reading this ostensibly young adult novel actually took this English major turned library science grad the majority of the year before I’d let myself finish it. Having purchased the book in January and made it through a few chapters, I forced myself to stop and read only segments at a time--to savor the first reading. Somewhere around the end of March I apparently had my attention pulled back to Pages for the incredible middle segment of the novel, but again I stopped before I became addicted. Finally I came to the turning point in the novel and the foreshadowing helped me to decide to procrastinate it a little, and eventually I wound up finishing it here in the end of November.

There are, of course, other striking poetic novels and even other poetic novels with lesbian themes--one might easily point to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s 1856 magnum opus, Aurora Leigh, as being the grandmother of such a genre (and perhaps a source of inspiration for Brownrigg). However, Pages for You is only separated from today’s reader by one decade, rather than sixteen and for this reader, it was a decade of reflection back to a time when she lived an experience all but identical to Flannery’s. When Browning was writing Aurora, a great many readers could understand the underlying tensions, but it had minor impact in the way so many of us today can finally relate to Brownrigg’s baby dyke bildungsroman. In point of fact, as I finished the novel this morning, on page 268, upon the words, “via campus mail” (referring to Flannery returning Anne’s apartment keys), I made the notation, remarking of Brownrigg, “Holy shit, this person has lived my life.”

"What did you do? I've--I've never felt anything like that before" (126), quoth Anne. To which I once wrote in my marginalia, "What a coincidence. I've never read anything this beautiful yet arousing before,” and indeed I have not. When Brownrigg decided toward the end of the piece (one might imagine an ending altered by her current mood) to break the fourth wall and indicate to her readers the difficulty in getting this novel published I empathized, and am very glad someone took a chance on it. It isn’t the sort of thing that fits well into today’s publishing model: far from being an Eragon or Hunger Games, Pages for You is a piece of lesbian memoir writing, wrapped in a fictional narrative, buried under a blanket of frozen language, separated by a gulf of poetic allusion...aimed at a young female readership. Emotionally or plot-wise, it’s also not quite what a parent would necessarily be looking to find on a daughter’s bookshelf…

…or maybe it is. The ending as written does not indicate to the reader whether or not Flannery continues to love women in the future, but it’s hard to miss the implication that falling in love with another woman can lead to heartbreak. Although the implication might be only as benign as to say that older women have baggage… Or simply that giving away one’s trust has consequences (so be prepared for a decade of PTSD and melancholy memoir writing). There is thankfully no implicit happily ever after as one might expect to find if Pages had been written by Malinda Lo. On page 217 when “Anne was forever telling Flannery, she had plenty of time,” I actually commented, “It’s ironic what horribly bad advice that is.” And so, I’m actually having difficulty imaging a case in which I would offer this piece as reader’s advisory to a teenager, but for a 20s or 30s-something reader like myself who’s already lived through just such an experience or two as Flannery encounters, it’s perfect.

If forced, in the end, to make that ugly overarching single sentence analysis, about Pages for you I might say:

Lyrical bliss.½

A fun,light hearted story. Good for showing students that you can over come any trouble in your life.

Interesting enough read, well written. Sad ending.

I enjoyed this story of a young girl who has to spend the summer with her very formal grandmother who she had never met and for whom books are her greatest love. Funny, well written. 8/16

Sassy, sensitive and adventurous is how I would describe the 11-year-old protagonist and her story. Ella is loathe to leave her mother in a Seattle cancer ward, but has no choice. She is flighted off to the House of Mud, her eccentric grandmother whom she's never seen, and who seems more concerned with her grammar than her mother's illness. The one girl her age in the vicinity also seems to take an instant dislike to her. Peacocks wail outside the strange adobe house and inside she is confronted with gaudy yellow walls in one room and a tiger skin in another. How will she survive the summer?

Pages for You is a vivid and passionate evocation of the rollercoaster ride of first love. For most of the novel, I was totally jealous of the young protagonist, Flannery, because all my crushes on older, well-read women during university remained sadly unrequited. By the end, suffice to say my envy had dissipated. A well-written and mildly sexy romance.

An Oxford academic deems his wife's workroom, where she works as a therapist, "The Delivery Room," because that's where ideas are born. Her Serbian background, causes her discomfort--both personally, as her country is bombed by NATO planes, and professionally, by her patients, who assume she is some kind of barbarian. A wonderfully literate, intelligent tale set in current-day England, that speaks to the realities of an enduring marriage, parenthood (with a twist), the therapist-patient dynamic, and the inner life of a very interesting Belgrade-born woman.

This is a sensitive, beautifully written book, with a wonderful use of language and turn of phrase. I enjoyed it so much - thoroughly recommend to anyone who doesn't need action sequences or shocks, but thoughtful prose.

This is exactly what it's like to be young, in a new place, and to fall completely, helplessly into first love with someone who may or may not deserve it. The ending made me absolutely sob, I was wrecked for a week. But that's why I love it so much...it rings so true and moved me so much. Been there, done that, and will never forget.

Mira is a therapist in London, originally from Yugoslavia, married to Peter, an academic, who has a son Graham, the product of a brief relationship from his youth. We meet several of Mira's patients, who are linked in some way to pieces of her real life, although she doesn't know this, nor do the patients. The story is set during the war in Yugoslavia form which Mira fled and her identity as a Serb changes what her patients and others project on to her. Her love for Peter and his for her is very real and very touching - they are real partners. When he is diagnosed with lymphoma and declines rapidly, it is heartbreaking. Paired with his decline is the talk among Mira's patients of babies, trying to have them, getting over a stillbirth, and of Graham's wife Clare and her desire to have child. Brownrigg switched narrators suddenly which I found a bit jarring. I also found the conversations with Svetlana, Mira's sister still in Yugoslavia one of the weaker elements of this book. This was book i liked, not loved.½

Morality Tale is appropriately named. This novel has one voice, one protagonist, and one narrative thread: a shotgun layout, so to speak. Compared with the web of stories in Delivery Room, this novel is downright simple in its linear structure. But don’t confuse simplicity for lack of depth. Humor complicates this novel in delicious ways. Do we really need one more book about divorce, adultery and step-parenthood? Yes, because it’s intelligent and funny. Not over-the-top-everything-for-a-gag funny. But funny in all-the-places-you-need-to-laugh-when-things-get-too-sad funny.

An interesting acknowledgement comes from Brownrigg at the end of Morality Tale: “This novel comes straight from the dark solitary heart of the middle of the night.” That may be a strange place to spawn comedy, but nevertheless: the book made me laugh. Here’s a protagonist who’s naïve in all the perfect spots – the downsides to a relationship with a married man, the difference between romantic affair and marriage, the shelf life of an ex-wife’s wrath, and what it takes to mother stepchildren beyond the ability to carpool and pack lunches. There’s such honesty in our unnamed protagonist’s admissions and honesty can be very funny.

For the rest of this review see the November 2008 issue of Open Letters here:http://openlettersmonthly.com/issue/nov08-sylvia-brownrigg-karen-vanuska/

How do you prefer your therapists? Professorial – hair short and neatly trimmed, tiny glasses, long face creased in all the proper places? Or motherly – ample body housing an ample heart, eyes a warm, inviting shade of brown? The latter is Mira Braverman, a Serbian-born therapist, married to Englishman Peter Braverman. They have a quiet and satisfying marriage and live in 1998 London. Peter has coined the phrase “Delivery Room” to describe Mira’s office – the place where her patients deliver their stories. Unfortunately, as a part of an occasional predilection to repetitive writing that mars Brownrigg’s otherwise fine prose, the reader is reminded no fewer than three times that Peter is the author of this phrase.

Over bangers-and-mash dinners with Peter, Mira, in what feels like a rupture of the patient-client contract, dishes dirt on her clients; to her credit, she keeps their names hidden behind such monikers as The Bigot, The American, the Aristocrat, and The Mourning Madonna—I began to wonder what my therapist might have called me. This chink in Mira’s professional armor was welcome for what it finally revealed about her – in spite of the calm, unreadable demeanor, she might be just as flawed as the rest of us. When it comes to the actual therapy sessions, Brownrigg uses shifts in point-of-view to great advantage, lifting what could be the hackneyed therapy scene into the realm of unique.

For more of this review, see the November 2008 issue of Open Letters here:
http://openlettersmonthly.com/issue/nov08-sylvia-brownrigg-karen-vanuska/

These stories fit nicely together, like Penguin Classics all snuggled together with their black spines. They are filled with more thoughts than drama and the protagonist's emotions are blunted by a sexy philosophical edge. The stories veer towards intimacy then careen into sharp humor. My favorites include "A Girl of Ambition" a story within a story done in a snappy voice, "The Lady in the Desert" which paints a coats of humor over a desert diet gone bad, and "Mars Needs Women" about Martha Stewarts run amok.½