Learned By Heart

Emma Donoghue is an auto-buy author for me and Learned by Heart is yet another proof of why. I especially love when her stories have a historical setting and the early nineteenth century is a period in which she excels. This time, the reader gets to spend time with historic lesbians against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.

The famous Anne Lister is fictionalized in this narrative, but she is not the main character. Instead, we experience her through the eyes of Eliza Raine, Lister’s first love. Lister is fascinating as a historical figure and a fictionalized character, but I’m glad Donoghue chose to focus on a lesser-known historical lesbian, especially one who is usually only discussed as a footnote in Lister’s history (Listory?). Eliza Raine doesn’t even have her own Wikipedia page. If you Google her, the first several results are for a romatasy author with the same name or pseudonym. Learned by Heart finally gives Raine the spotlight.

Raine and Lister’s story rings so true for teenage first love. Raine’s shyness and Lister’s over-confidence took me back to my own middle and high school experiences. Their relationship felt tender at times and adversarial at others.

I’m continually impressed by Emma Donoghue’s talent for spinning a beautiful and emotionally weighty story out of something which at first glance seems like a one-sentence C-plot. Raine and Lister, but especially Raine, have amazing depth and compelling character development for only 300 pages. There are no extraneous words in the writing, but it’s by no means a spare writing style.