It’s San Francisco, early 1940s. The war raging in Europe and Asia seems very, very far away, and the city trundles on under sweet sunlight, to the sound of rumbling trams and the distant sea. Behind closed doors and a few select, relatively safe clubs, the gay community live out their lives seeking friendship and good times, avoiding the harsh anti-LGBTQ laws , and maybe, just maybe, finding a bit of love. Loretta Haskel is a bohemian artist making a living selling lurid paintings to pulp magazines. She’s fought long and hard to claw a little bit of peace from the harsh life around her, and she’s not prepared to let anyone disturb it. So it is with some surprise that she finds herself falling for Emily, a cross-dressing singer and runaway heiress. It looks like they might be able to stitch together something like a real romance…but unfortunately society at large is more than happy to come crashing down on their happiness. Fortunately, one of their friends may just, possibly, be a witch…
This is one of those books I wish I liked more than I did. It’s a well-researched historical novel, detailing a very specific time and place (the west coast queer art scene, to be precise) but, dammit, I could FEEL the research lying firmly over every page. Many passages feel like they could have been roughly paraphrased excerpts from history books, and the world as described by Klages never really comes to life. The characters are sweet, but lacking in vividness, and tend to all sound alike (I had to keep checking back to see whom was talking to whom, so monochrome are the character voices). The magical realist element is dropped in so suddenly it barely registers, and ultimately this seems like a good idea that needed more work, more time and more effort. Me like books.
Me Like Books 