Her Lover by Dora Rosetti
Starting the year off with this short "landmark in early lesbian novels", which I have been reading for way too long. And that truly sums up the end of 2025 for me. I am a SUCKER for books that have played a big role for the history of queer literature, especially when they are so openly unsubtle with what is happening, whey they use the word gay, lesbian, homosexual, even bisexual. The authors had to be so brave to write them, to even publish them (and some of them waited until after their death, which I don't blame them for). And I am so grateful for them.
With that said, I have once again ended up not fully enjoying one of those books. The plot sounds right up my alley. A young student falls in love with another woman in the heart of 1920s Athens, Greece. One thing about me is that I LOVE campus novels and novels about young bright things and young intellectuals and young people struggling in a big city. Make it gay and I'm sold! Not to mention that my family is from Greece (though I was born and raised in Sweden), so I'm always extra curious about books that take place in a modern Greece.
Alexandria born Greek author Dora Rosetti (1908-1989), which is a pen name, has woven together a tumultuous story of love and jealousy and societal expectations which, when I think properly about it, is beautiful and heartbreaking and important. Certain parts of it were also really well written, especially since the main character, who is also named Dora, is a very emotional being who is quick to feel, quick to love, quick to loathe and then change her mind. It's this back and forth of it all, of her and Lisa and their ever changing moods and emotions, which became tiring. And in retrospect I understand the constant hesitation, I just wish it had been written differently. It didn't help that many things had no buildup, and that we switched from scene to scene constantly and still felt as if we kept missing things. It might be the translation, maybe the time period it was written in. I'm not sure. I'm sad that a novel which, according to the introduction, has been so important for the queer community but also the feminist movement in Greece didn't fully do it for me. I feel like it needed a round of edits, but I'm not sure how things worked back then, especially for a novel like this. It was published in Rosetti's lifetime, but she ended up burning most of the remaining copies due to the backlash. And when the book was rediscovered, Rosetti asked for it to be published after her death. And that is the saddest part of it all. How can I dislike a book when I know what it cost for it to be here?
