GLR September-October 2025

Novelty of Manners

T HE WHIMSICAL PRELUDE of Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s engag ing novel Mutual Interest intro duces readers to the historical sweep of the fictional action to come. Cit ing an actual event, the eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies, as the cause of the “Year Without a Summer” in 1816, Wolfgang-Smith’s narrator directs us

speaker describes the setting of 1915, a pe riod of early labor unions and suffrage ag itation, as follows: “Still, one day, those who take comfort in Capital Letters will call this the Progressive Era. Hurry: we have turned the page and missed a decade’s worth of Progress.” The second part of Mutual Interest in troduces Vivian, Oscar, and Squire’s per

A NNE C HARLES

MUTUAL INTEREST: A Novel by Olivia Wolfgang Smith Bloomsbury Publishing 336 pages, $28.99

sonal care company, Clancey & Schmidt, as a prosperous fixture of the business world. Vivian and Oscar have married for con venience, Oscar and Squire have become lovers, and Vivian has mostly given up her short trysts with young members of the Tiffany Club, based on a real group of single young women who cut and placed Tiffany gems for a living. Sarah, one lover of interest during this period, who flips pancakes in the window of a restaurant for work, affords Wolf gang-Smith the chance to reveal Vivian’s character as a self made woman who barely notices the rising labor movement and openly disdains the increasingly visible suffrage effort. Of this crusade, the narrator explains: “This madness for the vote struck Vivian as one more whining demand for things to be too easy, like the Sapphic teahouses and the abandonment of corsets—a

to the literary device of pins on a historical and geographical map. The narrator explains: “The Year Without a Summer is neither the beginning nor the end of this story, but time and cause unravel in all directions, and we find a hollow, simplify ing comfort in Capital Letters. The Dutch East Indies. The Hun dred Days.” The narrator ends the Prelude with the invention of the bicycle in 1817, an event that provides the flimsiest of con nections to a scene in the first chapter. Mutual Interest is a time-honored novel of manners with one important departure: the three main characters are queer. The “pins” in the narrative are these characters, introduced individ ually in three opening chapters and brought together midway through Part One. In the first chapter, set in 1898, the central figure, Vivian Lesperance, appears in her hated hometown of Utica, New York, riding on the handlebars of a bike operated by her closest friend and nascent love interest, Patience Stone. When Patience, a character of means, allows Vivian to accom pany her to Manhattan for her debutante coming-out party, Vi vian vows—despite having no way to support herself—never to return to Utica. With this resolve, her social trajectory be gins. In Chapter Two, we meet Oscar Schmidt, equally unsatis fied in his home in central Illinois, where he is an orphan being raised by his undermining Grandmother Hester. At age four teen, he has developed a debilitating crush on Hiram Ainsley, a clerk at the general store. The third main character, the autism coded Squire Clancey, appears next as a patrician son “de scended from as close to real aristocracy as New York could boast” and distinguished physically in that after his twentieth birthday his hair turned moon-gray. Despite their disparate cir cumstances and personalities, a combination of chance and Vi vian’s design brings these characters together to form an industrial and social alliance founded on the “mutual interest” of the title. The first part of the narrative illustrates the ambiance of Gilded Age New York to persuasive effect. Historical notes in volving such particulars as the construction and development of the New York subway system reflect the considerable re search the author has undertaken. Clothing of the era is worn, social conventions are upheld, and the novels of Edith Whar ton are suggested. A short Interlude links the two parts of the novel, bridging a ten-year time gap, which the narrator records with much wry commentary. Taking a retrospective stance, this Anne Charles lives in Montpelier, VT. With her partner and a friend, she co-hosts the cable-access show All Things L GBTQ . September–October 2025

A novel, a play, a poem … an experience!

StarLate

Rising Bold! A genre-bending reading and theatrical

experience that challenges sophisticated readers on many levels. Three male actors—two of whom are gay—along with a middle aged alcoholic actor who is trying to make a comeback, assist the narrator in weaving a complex story that honors readers as intelligent meaning-makers.

Available Now Dorrance Publishing and Major Online Booksellers

41