Hild is a fascinating and nuanced character whose bisexuality is important to her life and to the story. It’s also about the strength of women, friendship, and the natural world.
This is a long, slow novel, full of gorgeous details, political intrigue, and the complicated dynamics of power and religion. Hild of Whitby, 7th century Britain comes to life.
In Griffith’s lush and meticulously researched novel about the life of St. It’s a book about war, but it’s also a love story, and thus it’s very tender and gentle, which is quite a feat. The prose is stunning, and the characters come to life in refreshing new ways. This gorgeous and heartbreaking reimagining of The Iliad, told from the point of view of Patroclus, Achilles’s lover, is one of my favorite books of all time. We might not ever know their true names and stories, but we do know that they existed.Īncient The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller These books are a testament to the fact that queer people have been here all along. Yes, there is queer suffering in many of these books, but there is also queer resilience and joy. The queer characters in them have full, complicated, sometimes joyful, sometimes heartbreaking lives. Not all of these books have happy endings, although many of them do. And while we desperately need more historical fiction staring queer people, there are, happily, some wonderful books out there that center queer stories from centuries past. You might think, given the general lack of queer characters in historical fiction, that queer people sprang into existence sometime in the late 1960s. There’s definitely not enough queer historical fiction in the world. So it’s no surprise that Pride has got me thinking about queer historical fiction. For me, Pride has always been about honoring the past as much as celebrating the present.
It’s Pride month, which means I get to unapologetically talk up queer books all month (as if I don’t do that 12 months of the year).