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Sep. 14th, 2019 10:29 amI expected to enjoy but have conflicted feelings about Lissa Evans' Old Baggage, much as I enjoyed but had some conflicted feelings about Their Finest Hour and a Half, and indeed I did! But different ones than I thought!
Old Baggage, set in 1928, focuses on Mattie Simpkin and her housemate, Florrie Lee, usually called the Flea - a pair of middle-aged militant suffragettes in the aftermath of the movement's heyday. The Flea, in addition to her more-or-less full-time job as Mattie's lovelorn secretary, has an actual full-time job as a health visitor for low-income families; Mattie lectures and writes articles about the movement, but doesn't have much other scope for her enormous levels of Activist Energy ...
UNTIL she discovers, to her horror, that an old comrade who has gone full militant nationalist and started running a local proto-Fascist youth league, which spurs Mattie to set up a RIVAL youth league called the Amazons, focusing on encouraging young ladies of all classes to hone their political and mental acumen through activities such as javelin-throwing, jujitsu, and freethinking debate.
Enter the two other leading characters, young members of the Amazons representing the kind of duality you might see in a nineteenth-century novel: Ida, bright and ambitious and lower-class and very interested in the opportunities the Amazons represent, and Inez, daughter of a tragically dead former suffragette with a connection to Mattie's tragically dead brother, who joins the Amazons to learn more about her mother but otherwise demonstrates extremely little interest in anything. Most of the plot of the book hangs on the way that Mattie interacts with both of these young women, and how that reflects on her and her relationship with the Flea.
And I really do like almost all of this -- it's honestly great to read a novel that engages genuinely and affectionately with older women, with older activist women, with the aftermath of major movements and the relationships between different generations -- but we've got to talk more about Mattie and the Flea,
( the dynamic revolutionary straight woman and the practical pining lesbian (spoilers for the book's ending) )
Anyway it turns out this book is a prequel to a previous Lissa Evans book about a Blitz evacuee and the con artist he's billeted with and how they Form An Unlikely Family, which means despite my qualms I will almost certainly read it.
Old Baggage, set in 1928, focuses on Mattie Simpkin and her housemate, Florrie Lee, usually called the Flea - a pair of middle-aged militant suffragettes in the aftermath of the movement's heyday. The Flea, in addition to her more-or-less full-time job as Mattie's lovelorn secretary, has an actual full-time job as a health visitor for low-income families; Mattie lectures and writes articles about the movement, but doesn't have much other scope for her enormous levels of Activist Energy ...
UNTIL she discovers, to her horror, that an old comrade who has gone full militant nationalist and started running a local proto-Fascist youth league, which spurs Mattie to set up a RIVAL youth league called the Amazons, focusing on encouraging young ladies of all classes to hone their political and mental acumen through activities such as javelin-throwing, jujitsu, and freethinking debate.
Enter the two other leading characters, young members of the Amazons representing the kind of duality you might see in a nineteenth-century novel: Ida, bright and ambitious and lower-class and very interested in the opportunities the Amazons represent, and Inez, daughter of a tragically dead former suffragette with a connection to Mattie's tragically dead brother, who joins the Amazons to learn more about her mother but otherwise demonstrates extremely little interest in anything. Most of the plot of the book hangs on the way that Mattie interacts with both of these young women, and how that reflects on her and her relationship with the Flea.
And I really do like almost all of this -- it's honestly great to read a novel that engages genuinely and affectionately with older women, with older activist women, with the aftermath of major movements and the relationships between different generations -- but we've got to talk more about Mattie and the Flea,
( the dynamic revolutionary straight woman and the practical pining lesbian (spoilers for the book's ending) )Anyway it turns out this book is a prequel to a previous Lissa Evans book about a Blitz evacuee and the con artist he's billeted with and how they Form An Unlikely Family, which means despite my qualms I will almost certainly read it.
