Read Yes
Length 368
Overall Feels I wanted more gay.
Gay Vibes 8/10
Drink Pairing A slightly watered down, iced oat milk latte.
⭐⭐
I am disenchanted with The Disenchantment.
I firmly believe the world needs more queer literature, so I’m glad this book exists to help create more visibility. Especially as it tackles queerness for women in history. Depicting one of the many ways that has played out throughout history. I wanted to love this one, but I don’t love it. The overall book feels like it is being pulled in two directions and neither are particularly well portrayed: being a lesbian in a society and time that does not condone or allow it and surviving an abusive marriage in a society and time that condones and allows it. Basically, as a woman, you’re fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t. The main character in The Disenchantment is fucked all around except in the most literal way.
As both a lesbian and survivor of domestic violence at the hands of men… I could not connect with this book, and I really should have. Marie Catherine is a Baroness in Paris during the Affair of Poisons. She’s married to a physically and emotionally abusive older man with whom she has two young children. She is having an affair with another noblewoman. There’s storytelling and an artist who gets caught up in the whole thing. There was so much potential in this not-so-little novel, but my attention was not kept. I think I read four books in the time it took me to get through this one.
The plot is muddy, while the narrative is meandering. Bell is tackling too many massive topics in one debut novel. If she would have focused on a singular theme, the book would have benefited and had a larger impact.
I desperately wanted to love this because it is all about the lady-gay, female empowerment, overcoming obstacles, and surviving abuse. Unfortunately, I just could not get on board with it. I expect great things from Celia Bell, but this was not it.
Memorable Quotes
“So Marie Catherine had quietly believed for years that she had been made with something lacking, and any spark of inclination that she might feel for a man in company was a short-lived thing that fizzled out after the first imaginary movement of love. Then she had met Victoire de Conti.” … “She didn’t love as some women did.”
“”I forgive you.” She said it as if she were a priest who had the power to offer absolution. And, for a moment, she felt that she did, as if the words had lit a candle flame inside her mouth that burned with the light of her love. She did not, would never, believe that flame was the flame of hell. Not if every confessor in France lined up to tell her that she was damned.”
bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna
Buy on Amazon
Title: The Disenchantment
Author: Celia Bell
Publisher: Pantheon
Copyright: 2023
ISBN: 9780593317174
This is a masterpiece, brilliantly written and incredibly informative.