GLR July-August 2022

the first to legalize same-sex marriage by a popular ref erendum in 2015. As Carregal puts it: “In 1990, the election of Mary Robinson as President of the Irish Re public symbolised the emergence of a society that no longer defined itself as essentially Catholic and tradi tional.” Under Robinson, a reformist lawyer known for her work to legalize contraception in the 1970s and male homosexuality in the ’80s, Ireland has become one of the more progressive countries in the world. This has led to a spate of works by writers such as Emma Donoghue (famous for the bestseller Room ) that have explored contemporary lesbian themes. Other writers have attempted to dramatize what cultural historian Linden Peach called the “shock of what was hidden for so long.” Indeed, many have reached back, via historical fiction, to reclaim a once hidden gay and lesbian past. A good example of this is Jamie O’Neil’s novel At Swim, Two Boys (2001), which reclaims the participation of gay people in the narrative of Irish literature by imagining a same-sex love affair between two teenage boys. Similarly, Tóibín’s The Master (2004) is a reflection upon Henry James’ sexuality. Other popular novels have explored a whole new range of modern LGBT issues, such as post-feminism, gender terminol ogy, and class. Carregal’s survey is useful because it moves past well-known writers such as Tóibin and John Boyne ( The Heart’s Invisible Furies , 2017) to include many other interesting and rel evant voices. At the very least, one is sure to come away from this book with a new list of works and authors to be explored. ____________________________________________________ Dale Boyer’s book of poetry Columbus in the NewWorld is forthcoming. W INNER of both the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses in the United Kingdom and Ireland and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Lote mixes real individuals like British socialite Stephen Tennant with fic tional characters, as well as first- and third-person narration and excerpts from the imagined book Black Modernisms . In Lote , things are set in motion when Black writer Mathilda Adamarola volunteers to work in the archives of Britain’s National Portrait Gallery, which she does in part in order to pursue her rapturous “Transfixions.” Those that cap ture her imagination are bohemian and queer figures from the 1920s and ‘30s, such as members of the Bloomsbury Group and the Bright Young Things. While there, she comes across a photograph of the decadent Stephen Tennant with a flamboy ant Black woman, Hermia Druitt. Fascinated, Mathilda begins LOTE by Shola von Reinhold Duke University Press. 392 pages, $19.95 R EGINALD H ARRIS Tripping on the ’20s

Sheilah Graham and Me (Age 14)

Sheilah Graham appeared, where else, in The Star ; I read her column faithfully each day. “A girl for Jack Lemmon! (mom is Felicia Farr) ... Preminger inks John Wayne for ‘In Harm’s Way’ ...” I cared about these things. At whose behest? No aunt or uncle or neighbor told me to. And yet it was somehow vital to keep abreast. Why? I didn’t know. I simply knew.

J OHN H ARRIS

to search for more information about the little-known Scottish poet. This leads her to fake her way into a mysterious Resi dency in the small European city of Dun because Hermia had lived there. The other Residents are followers of “Thought Art” and devotees of the esoteric theories of philosopher John Garreaux. In contrast to these austere Residents, Mathilda meets Hubert Erskine-Lilly, who shares her devotion to the same “Transfix ions.” Along with a pair of seemingly sympathetic Residents, they attempt to revive the “Lote-os,” an “early Queer modernist subculture” dedicated to hedonism. From a mention of “Lote” in the Residency’s textbook, Mathilda deduces that there’s a connection between it and Hermia Druitt. Stealing into the Res idency archives, she discovers an uncomfortable truth about its origins and John Garreaux Senior’s treatment of Hermia. The novel’s prose occasionally veers into the florid, befitting Mathilda’s fascination with the Bright Young Things: “That winter, we sorted the wheat from the chaff, binned the wheat, and made ambrosia and nectar from the chaff. ... [W]e fed on Style, having flambéed Substance with a bottle of cherry liqueur and a dramatically dropped match.” With the Residency, its as cetic, overly serious participants, “Conveyors” (facilitators), and the reclusive leader Garreaux, von Reinhold comically parodies the dense language and severe attitudes of some artistic, literary, and philosophical theories. Lote also critiques the ways in which Black artists in gen eral, and Black women artists in particular, have been ignored, mistreated, and suppressed by the mainstream art world. Von Reinhold writes: “Black people consuming and creating beauty of a certain kind is still one of the most transgressive things that can happen in the West, where virtually all consumption is or chestrated through universal atrocity.” Originally published in the U.K. in 2020, this challenging, multi-layered novel may not be everyone’s glass of pink cham pagne, with its view of eccentricity, excess, and languor as a route to a kind of queer utopia. Those willing to escape into its world, however, will find Lote to be a fascinating and chal lenging experience. ____________________________________________________ Reginald Harris, a writer and poet based in Brooklyn, is the author of Ten Tongues (2003) and Autogeography (2013).

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