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. ( )

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. ( )

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"..... ( )