The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

I have been reading one of the most astounding books I have read in a while.

This work, by Olivia Waite, an author who has written a romance by the above name, between two women, somehow landed in my hands, and pretty soon, I could not put it down.  The story is set in 19th Century England.  The chief protagonist is a young woman who had worked with her late father, who was an astronomer, by making hand-calculations to support his astronomical observations.  (In that time, theories of the motions of planetary objects had to produce predictions, based on hand calculations, and these calculations were often carried out by women!  At any rate, this service of our heroine is presented here as a novelty.  But a story of a lesbian protagonist who is a mathematician, and an astronomer!  How wonderful!)

One of the most wonderful things about Olivia Waite's writing is: the language; by which I mean, the tone, the speech, the voice of the narrative.  I often deplore the stories about bygone times, where the idiom is modern.  It does not work.  The language of those times very closely reflected the inequality between men and women; there were a thousand ways in which women were subtly shamed or patronised for their words or their actions, and it cannot be done in modern speech without missing the proper tone.  This is a weakness in numerous movies, as well.  The caution with which our heroine, Lucy---who was of humble background---or rather, the woman who loves her, who is a countess, tries to find out whether Lucy is open to being the object of the countess's love, is very refreshing indeed.  It would not have been appropriate for the countess to drag Lucy into her bedroom, and make her move there.  It had to be all approached much more circumspectly.  Circumspection is rather an alien concept to so many authors, especially lesbian authors, because so few lesbian authors are in the closet, and forced to behave circumspectly.

Olivia Waite's writing is beautiful, because of how poetical it is.  She writes about nature, about flowers, about music, about embroidery: things that I could never write about intelligently, because I hardly notice them!  I am such a failure in that department...

I just had to write a review of the book at a point when I have only gone halfway through the book.  (I keep doing this.)  Amazon did not permit me to write a review under my pseudonym, since I had not racked up a sufficient dollar amount of purchases with them, so the review must be done here.  I have read two more books that are truly wonderful, but I will not review them here, because I feel that Olivia W's book needs to be presented independently.  Hurry out and get a copy!

Kay