at first i just kind of disliked this, then i hated it, then i started to wonder. by the end, i still wasn't sure, but i can say that the very last bit was wonderful, and surprising. i'd like to think that suyin was doing more than it seemed like she was, for most of the book. it's bothersome to me when i feel like i am hating a book because of how much i'm hating the main character, because i really don't think a person should have to like that character to like the book, and i'm pretty sure that was what was happening here. i thought red was just awful and i didn't understand her love for mara, or mara's love for her. the "romance" in the book was not addressed at all and i guess only made any sense to me in the context of their being a war and so there were both limited options for people, and everyone was thrown into a constant heightened emotional state.

by the end, i think i was starting to see that this wasn't about red at all, but about mara. it was her story and her escaping of a marriage she wasn't interested in and an abusive relationship with red. it was her freedom that we were seeing, through red's perspective, and the way that red self-destructed through her inability to truly care about others or understand them. i even question her relationship with rhoda, although the 10 year age gap when red was 16 certainly makes me think rhoda was a predator.

in the end i still didn't like this, but i do wonder more if i wasn't too quick to judge. i will definitely think about it for a bit, and it was a much faster read than i thought it would be, so perhaps worth it after all.

this felt gross as i was reading: "She said she wanted to be a mother to me. Rhoda had used me, and taught me, and now I was what I was because of her."

as did this, but maybe i'm finally understanding that this says much more about red than it does about what the author thinks of relationships: "When people suffer they take it out on the object of their love, because the object of their love is in their possession. They cannot stop themselves."

"How few of us really try to find out what we're like, really, inside?"

(1 star)

7/28/23:

it says something powerful about this book that i couldn't stop thinking about this for many days after that first read. i started to have a lot of ideas about unreliable narrators and compulsive heterosexuality, but also about the lack of men during the war and women friends practicing for "real" relationships when the men returned, and on and on. so i had to reread this.

it's like it was a different book two weeks later. i fell right into the writing from the start, and thought it was beautifully done, which i hadn't thought last time up until the end. i thought the "romance" between red and mara was much more clear this time as well. i still think red is a pretty awful person, but i understand more where she's coming from this time. it's all fear, really. at and of everything. her friends are trying out lesbian relationships because there is a shortage of men with the war going on, but they are just waiting for the men to come back to have "real" relationships. the girls pair off and have this practice coupling, but it's nothing so much as a placeholder for when the men return. and red doesn't know how to handle that, and maybe even who she is. mara is more comfortable with herself once she's realized who she is, and she's willing to embrace it, and live her life, not wait for life to happen around her. red can't do that, because it's too big a risk for her. this makes for a contentious relationship between the two of them, and neither of them handle it particularly well, but red especially doesn't. she can't envision what it could look like, having never seen it before. whereas mara can.

i don't know, this ended up being much more interesting and well done this time around. i found a line here or there - that i didn't notice before - really highlighted the truth of this story, and it felt so much more real and sad this time around. i really liked it this time.

(3.25 stars) ( )

"It's we who are abnormal, Red"
By sally tarbox on 17 February 2017
Format: Paperback
An extremely well-written story, with convincing characters and setting.
Narrator Red (Bettina) is a physiology student in the last year of WW2 London. The cold, grotty digs and joyless existence are well-portrayed, as Red and her female colleagues are absorbed in their studies and same-sex crushes. Then Mara joins the college - a beautiful , well-off and married woman, to whom Red is immediately drawn...
But Red is a more complex character than first appears, shaped by the culture of the time, which forbids such relationships; and, through her upbringing, to be excessively parsimonious, even when she comes into money... ( )

This is an incredibly perceptive novel illustrating how destruction is borne of cowardice. The novel deals in particular with a failed lesbian relationship, but given its WWII setting, it is also a powerful allegory of the 30s and 40s. ( )