But everything here that makes this a gripping read also makes it a frustrating one: two completely different people connect unexpectedly and then spend the rest of the novel coming together and separating, coming together and separating, the one woman totally committed to understanding and accepting how aloof, and even cold-hearted, the other woman (the love of her life) is, both of them often behaving in a way that makes you want to yell a little.
We suffer for love, surely, and many of us would do most anything to get and keep it. Yet I found the dynamics between Kim and Sonja often very exhausting. Not a lot of people would put up with the nonsense Kim does. She's either a fool or exactly the kind of person you'd want to be in a relationship with.
Crisp yet heartfelt writing, great dialogue and fully fleshed out characters keep what should have been a ludicrous plot a very compelling one. Another selling point for me is the uncomfortably realistic attitude that desperately trying not to acknowledge how you feel about someone can be a twenty-four hour a day job. In a way the very things that made me uncomfortable with Forbidden Passions were the things that kept me reading.
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When I first read Forbidden Passion early last year, I didn't have much patience for the characters. But having just finished this novel a second time (and finding it to be a much better book than I had previously thought) I found (unfortunately) more than my share of quotes with which I could relate, not (of course) on a relationship level like the women's in Gogoll's novel (even if they don't know they both feel the same about each other until well into the story), but in a completely one-sided way.
Using Kindle Highlights more this time around, I saw a lot that struck me as emotionally familiar. You can see both what you like and what other readers favor when you activate digitally underling functions on ereaders, as well.
Seeing some people have picked the same passage can give you an eerie, but not unpleasant feeling, of being less alone...I also believe (however pathetic or 'nuts' this may sound) that a lot of the reading I've done this past year has somehow saved me (whether it be lesfic or mainstream.) Sometimes, without my choosing it at all, the right book seems to fall into my life and heal little part of me.
Kim had nearly fainted. She immediately began working out a plan for how, “for reasons of strategic importance to the company,” she could move the department head’s office. (The main character is half joking/half serious about relocating when she realizes her new boss is someone she likes.)
She watched Sonja as much as possible without staring openly. I have got to stop doing this! Kim squared her shoulders and forced herself to look in the other direction. It made no sense whatsoever to become attached to a woman like that, or to even waste time thinking about it. She glanced over at her and enjoyed watching her laughing, relaxed profile. What a wonderful woman. (It made me feel slightly better this passage had been highlighted several times by other readers. It's awful when you catching yourself looking at someone, almost against your will.)
My God, she must be afraid of me! What did straight women really think of lesbians? That they had nothing better to do than pounce on unwilling partners. That's how it looked anyway. (This both saddened me and made me laugh because there are actually people out in the world who believe lesbians are out to "get" every woman in the world. Yikes!)
Kindle Highlights has helped me both personally and with research for book club related materials. Even though Sleep Donation by Karen Russell is about as far away as anything I've read this past year I found myself underlining many wonderful passages in it. Also, oddly enough, H.L. Mencken's In Defense of Women has some highlight-worthy lines in it, too! :)
"It is a special kind of homeless, says our mayor, to be evicted from your dreams."
