Last Night at the Telegraph Club, by Malinda Lo
This book had been on my reading list long enough that I have forgotten why it was even on there. I think someone must have recommended it to me some time ago. Linked to this, I actually had very little idea what it was about, until I picked it up from the library. But I think overall I'd like to thank whoever it was that spurred me to add this book to my reading list, because it was quite good.
'Last Night at the Telegraph Club' is essentially a romance novel. But it's set in 1950s America, and it's a romance between two girls. Obviously, this was a time and a culture in which a lesbian relationship (and an interracial relationship - Lily is Chinese American and Kath is white American) was considered unacceptable. And that's putting it lightly - the truth is that homosexuality was considered a psychological disease, and gay people had no choice but to go underground and keep themselves hidden, or risk being ostracised by their family and friends or even being arrested.
I really admired the pace of the novel, and the way this created such a natural, authentic and believable scenario. It wasn't straightaway that Lily knew she was gay - Lo showed us that journey of self-discovery first. And the romance with Kath was by no means a whirlwind either. It began as a friendship; it was initially tentative (reflecting how careful they needed to be considering the society they lived in). It wasn't until much later that the intensity of their love grew, and structurally this coincided with the relationship being made public - unintentionally. So we had just reached the point of being completely invested in Lily and Kath's relationship, and caring deeply about both characters, when Lo brought in the explicit homophobia, with Lily's parents near disowning her and her trusted friends turning against her. It was rather upsetting, effectively so.
Lo's portrayal of Lily's struggle against homophobia was extremely well done, both in the climactic moment of coming out to her parents, and facing the constant indirect homophobia up to this point. Understandably there were a lot of complex emotions going on - there was the primal and instinctual love for Kath, the rebellious thrill and excitement of sneaking out to the Telegraph Club lesbian bar at night, the shame and embarrassment Lily is made to feel for being gay, the guilt of hiding the truth from her parents, and the conflict of this with the knowledge that if she tells the truth they will never see her the same way again.
The racial and cultural context only added another layer of complexity to Lily's situation; as a Chinese American family there was already a struggle to fit in to a predominantly white America, and Lily also finds herself tangled up in her parents' ideas of what a good and conventional Chinese daughter should be like according to their culture.
All of this was done so sensitively, and was really well-written.
Linked to my previous point, it was evident from the historical notes and the extensive bibliography at the end of the book that this was an extremely well-researched and historically accurate piece of fiction. This really came through in Lo's allusions to a variety of historical events and situations that impacted people like Lily. There was McCarthyism, and the context of Chinatown and Chinese immigration, and linked to both of these the threat of deportation for Lily's family.
And I couldn't decide whether enough was made of these. On the one hand it was good that these things lurked in the shadows, only occasionally coming into the foreground, whilst Lily and Kath's romance and the context of gender and sexuality took centre stage. But at the same time, it almost felt like a bit of a cop-out. And by that, I mean that I wasn't satisfied with the development of the contexts of McCarthyism and immigration and deportation. Yes, they were included, but I wasn't convinced that Lo made enough of their significance.
For example, early on, Lily's father has his immigration papers confiscated, meaning that his American citizenship is hanging in the balance. And we never find out what happens to him - whether the threat ever abates, or how he deals with it. Another example is the relationship between Lily's friend Shirley, and Calvin who is a rumoured Communist sympathiser. This loose thread was also not tied up by the end; it was unclear whether Calvin faced any consequences for his suspected Communist leanings, and we weren't told whether he and Shirley stayed together, and the impact of this relationship was generally quite ambiguous.
And perhaps Lo left it all deliberately vague. She ended the book with an epilogue set a year later, where we see a small glow of hope, but no real conclusion to any of the overhanging difficulties she set up during the novel. And perhaps this was a half-hearted ending. But maybe it was her intention to reflect a reality in which these big issues couldn't easily be fixed, where Lily will still face difficulties because of her ethnicity and her sexuality.
But in spite of some unconvincing elements and a bit of a naff ending, I overall enjoyed the book. It was very well-written, and it was good of Lo to give a story and a voice to Lily, who represents the very disempowered and underrepresented lesbian Chinese Americans in the 1950s. It was a lovely book.