Very interesting and fun read and a book I want to talk about endlesslym. It is so smart. The writing is original and playful, but the pacing is not always well-balanced. Nevertheless, I prefer an original voice over a perfect craftsperson. ( )

The Protestant work ethic vs the Roman Catholic High Mass. The Dave Matthews Band vs George Clinton and Parliament. Vanilla vs Ben & Jerry's Schweddy Balls. To this illustrious history of the proud representatives of the dull and the fabulous, this novel gives us the Garreaux Residency vs LOTE. Winner of the 2021 Republic of Consciousness prize for UK small press fiction, Lote for me has a foot in each camp. Some really interesting stuff here, yet also often really boring, thesis and antithesis produce a synthesis of 3 stars.

Mathilda, who is Black, British, poor, and queer, is an Escape artist. Facing racial, sexual, gender, and economic oppression, she survives by jumping from one name and life into another. The constant is her fascination with the eccentric non-conforming socialite Modernists of 1920s Britain. While researching them she stumbles across a photo that sets her on a quest to uncover buried artistic history: in the photo is a "lost" artist from that period - the black, female, and queer poet Hermia Druitt, who despite having no money herself seems to have belonged to a subset of this counterculture.

Hermia thus shares significant similarities of identity with Mathilda, and is the basis for an exploration of two related phenomenon: the hidden history of black artists in Europe in earlier decades, and the added racialized pathologizing of black eccentrics in an already suspect general class of eccentrics. This is most interestingly explored in passage in a (fictional) generally unknown essay Mathilda discovers about a (fictional) Hermia:

Her costumes had the ability to temporarily dazzle onlookers into confusion, or sometimes admiration and awe. At the very least they could shut people up, even if they went on to racialize what they saw, rather than view it as a creative trait like her outlandish peers or enshrine it as 'eccentricity'.
Even today, Western conceptions of eccentricity very rarely tend to encompass Black personas. This is because eccentricity is tethered to the idea of a rarefied and semi-fragile aristocracy. For it to work, unconventional elements require a foil of idealised social stability, hence why the history of eccentrics is even more populated by the white, privileged and wealthy than other histories... Note that, without class, eccentricity loses prestige... Thus, on the one hand, eccentricity is not seen as erupting from Blackness, and on the other, the personal effects and performativity of the Black eccentric generally are seen as erupting from Blackness, but not as eccentricity. Instead, as eccentricity divested of the constellate qualities of creativity, nobility or genius, which is deemed something else altogether.

Mathilda discovers that Hermia and her friends were involved in an occult society that attempted to contact the Luxuries - black Angelic beings connected to the Lotus Eaters of Greek myth. In a curious coincidence (or is it?) Mathilda is awarded a place in an artists residency in a continental European town where Hermia and friends formed their LOTE society, where there is located a pillar dedicated to the medieval saint Christina the Astonishing (the very subject of the fine Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song of that name, which is neither here nor there, really...) and which they believed contains trapped Luxuries.

This residency turns out to represent the opposing force to LOTE, the Luxuries, and all expressions of sensory enjoyment. It represents Odysseus dragging his men away from the island paradise of the Lotus Eaters so they can suffer and die properly, as they're expected to. Based on the "thought art" of John Garreaux, residents spurn all but the most dully utilitarian in all sense modes, speak incomprehensible jargon reminiscent of corporate speak, and preach "self-abnegation", which includes producing art that will intentionally never be shown to another living person (an ironic claiming on the part of privileged white people of something that is forced on dispossessed black people like Hermia and Mathilda, the denial and hiding of their true core).

This was a big part of my problem with this novel. The Garreaux Residency is satire, and satire is a literary form that is my Achilles heel. I usually tend to find it dull, uninteresting, and unengaging, and this was no exception, alas. The whole Garreaux facet of the novel was tiresome for me and it's a large part of the work. In the end it unsurprisingly turns out to be intimately tied up with Hermia and LOTE, which I think works well enough, but it takes a long time to get there.
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Ok one small thing I only discovered after buying it and finishing it: apparently the kindle ebook has at least a few pages missing. I sort of noticed one or two abrupt transitions but I assumed it was a stylistic choice I think haha. Anyway so don't get that! I still absolutely loved it but yeah

I was hovering around a 4 but ultimately I was in awe of the construction of the novel - the amount of depth, the layers, the way everything is knitted together. The engagement with very topical stuff around racism and decolonialism in culture/the arts that makes a very clear and important point while still engaging deeply and making you think about it in ways past straight didactic writing. The clearly in depth research around modernism, Black artists and the Bright Young Things that weaves in a deep and believable story about a fictional person around many real figures I'd not heard of before. The strange, slightly unreal town of Dun. The even stranger realm of "Thought Art" and its inscrutable leader Garreaux, which acts as a parody of art academia in general and its focus on a certain kind of theory and abstractness over the sensual but is developed so well as to be its brilliant own thing, far above just a parody. (this bit reminded me of the Third Policeman and Dalkey)

On a personal level the kind of "decadence" advocated here isn't something that appeals to me, but obviously this doesn't matter. The author makes a great case for reclaiming ornament and luxury - not strictly as a "radical project", but simply as something that the oppressed deserve in itself, for its own enjoyment. The power of ornament and dress to give you power over how you're perceived so you're not *just* seen and defined by being Black in a racist society is emphasised.

The mystery of what's behind Garreuax's project - seemingly a negation of art as pleasure and appearance - and the steady reveal of the life of Black poet, performance artist and socialite Hermia Druitt and *her* project is absolutely compelling and intricately designed. It fascinates me as a lover of mysteries and puzzles. The final "reveals" are worth it - clearly just a build up of what's gone before and yet still surprising and clever... but also with some lingering mystery at the end.

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This debut novel is full to the brim of fascinating ideas, is of a literary bent, with a dollop of art and (? invented) art theory. Weaves itself around identities and histories, visible, invisible, suppressed, repressed, exposed, lived, sought and enjoyed.

It gets a bit bogged down in the middle and may have benefited from one more edit, but it left me with plenty to ponder upon and enjoy.

I suspect Von Reinhold was inspired by A S Byatt's [Possession], with their documents and biographies and layers of research. Bold for a debut novel, and I will very definitely be looking for their work in the future.

One of the #Twentyin2020 novels, a collaboration between Jacaranda and Words of Colour Productions, to publish 20 novels by black British writers in 2020. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2020/07/202079-lote-shola-von-reinhold.html ( )