Pages For You by Sylvia Brownrigg is a wonderful book that takes you through the stages, emotions, elation, frustrations, and uncertainty of first love. Not a puppy love, but a real first love that is reciprocated and complicated.
The story follows Flannery, a first year English major at a university on the east coast. She is a bright, curious, independent, and charming character. This is one of those books that you easily get sucked into with quick chapters full of significant interactions and revelations. In a short time you feel as if you are Flannery; awkwardly navigating your feelings, homework, and social etiquette's as a closeted, madly-in-love-lesbian. I sped through this book in a day, like I said it sucks you right in.
Flannery meets Anne, an intimidating, stunningly beautiful grad student eleven years older than herself. She is hit by that proverbial truck, love at first sight. In the beginning the match seems far fetched, and Sylvia Brownrigg seems to struggle to justify their attraction by overdoing literary references to Harold Bloom, Jamaica Kincaid, Marilyn Hackers and Daphne Du Maurier. These references may feel pretentious unless you were ever an English major yourself or loved someone that was.
Although the language itself is nothing magical or special, it is easy. Pages For You excels at the self consciousness of first love, the naivety, confidence and fullness of it. This book was almost eerie at times in its similarity to my first love, and for that I am grateful. First love is a powerful thing for anybody, but pair that with discovering that you may be a lesbian and you've got a whole different animal. This book does a wonderful job portraying that incredibly personal, internal (because you feel like you can't talk to anyone about it), private and heart wrenching journey.
It's a book that I think any lesbian at any stage of her life would enjoy. It's an honest book about first love, that may be sentimental but is not overly romanticized. A great vacation book.
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