Publishers Weekly
06/26/2023
Donoghue (Haven) returns with an impressive story inspired by Eliza Raine, who was written about in Anne Lister’s coded diaries about her lesbian love life. At the beginning of the 19th century at a chilly boarding school in Yorkshire, 14-year-olds Eliza and Anne share a garret near the servants’ quarters. Born in India to an Indian mother and an East India Company man, Eliza has been sent to England for “finishing” by her father, who is subsequently lost at sea, leaving her and her sister with a small fortune and in the care of guardians. Anne is vibrant, defiant, and smarter than most of the other “Middles” in their class, and she soon draws the observant but reserved Eliza into her orbit. In Anne’s presence, Eliza grows in confidence and the two become inseparable as their friendship turns sexual. The bonds that form between the two girls ultimately lead to Eliza’s tragic undoing, and she ends up in a mental asylum. Donoghue makes good use of her choice to delve into Eliza’s perspective rather than Anne’s by exploring the steep cost for her protagonist of tethering herself to a rebel. This melancholic love story is imbued with deep feeling and generosity toward its characters. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Learned By Heart-
Emma Donoghue is among the most fearless contemporary novelists we have: an immensely talented writer who is a great storyteller and, based on her extensive body of work, unafraid of subjects that give her less-courageous peers pause... Learned By Heart is a wrenching love story, both queer and multiracial. —Chris Bohjalian, The Washington Post
"Donoghue’s affection for the savvy, strange Lister is obvious, and the author makes her teenage couple’s partnership both deeply serious and wonderfully naive...but the reader knows from the first page that their infatuation won’t last, and the novel is ultimately a tender, sad account of first love"—Emma Sarappo, The Atlantic
"Bold and dazzling...Emma Donoghue has proven herself a masterful storyteller of historical worlds populated with deeply imagined characters. Though the universes she creates seem like they could expand infinitely, she builds small, confined spaces at the center from which grow rich possibilities. This is all especially true of Learned by Heart, a story of risk, love and two young women discovering themselves by way of each other...The language here—of deep friendship and longing, text and subtext—is captivating. Sentences sing, and details shine. Donoghue has a remarkable ability to hold you in a moment, allowing you to see as a character does, knowing the questions each breath contains..."—BookPage
"...unabashedly romantic, dreamlike....a wonderfully rich portrait of boarding school life, both a mirror of the outside world’s social hierarchies and a hothouse of complex interactions among girls striving to become women. As always, her narrative is grounded in sharp observation, strong characters, and nice period detail...a treat for her many fans."—Kirkus Reviews
"Richly imagined...the intimacies of isolated schoolgirls yield to full-tilt desire. That first fire eventually sputters, but not without leaving behind some beautiful embers."—Vogue
"Immersive, sprightly, and sensual ... the characters' delight in language makes for playful prose full of euphemisms, Latin phrases, and French proverbs. And in the center of it all is a tender record of groundbreaking young passion."—Rebecca Foster, Shelf Awareness
"Impressive...this melancholic love story is imbued with deep feeling and generosity toward its characters."—Publishers Weekly
"Spellbinding...everything about Learned By Heart strikes me as nearly perfect...Donoghue is superb at capturing the unmediated hearts of love-drenched adolescents: raw, vulnerable, disorienting, almost painfully excitable."—Claude Peck, The Star Tribune
“Learned By Heart gorgeously reimagines Anne and Eliza’s relationship, conveying the intense, heady experience of discovering your first love.”—Real Simple
"Full of passion and heartbreak.”—Geek Girl Authority
"The beauty of Donoghue's thoroughly researched novel rooted in Lister's famous diary lies in the ways it explores how unequal the effects of love can be on two souls...It’s truly a tragedy when your life’s best moments are already in the rearview mirror"—Poornima Apte, Booklist
"Donoghue is at her very best evoking the mysteries and miracles of first love ... Simply and without a shred of sentimentality, she evokes a relationship that is convincing and exquisitely touching."—Clare Clark, The Guardian (UK)
"The perils of isolation and confinement are once again countered by the unexpected grace and tenderness captivity can sometimes bring ... This novel is based on a true story; both women were born in 1791 and Anne Lister kept a 5mn word diary, but you wouldn’t know it. The book wears its painstaking research like the light shifts the schoolgirls sleep in."—Susie Boyt, Financial Times (UK)
AudioFile - JULY 2023
Shiromi Arserio is the ideal choice for this touching novel about two 14-year-old girls who attend a boarding school in York, England, in 1805. Arserio vividly conveys the emotional complexities of Eliza Raine, a lonely, wealthy orphan from India, and Anne Lister, an audacious, highly intelligent tomboy. The social outcasts quickly become inseparable, and their friendship blossoms into desire. As they experience the beauty of first love, Arserio poignantly expresses the intensity of their forbidden passion and their feelings of vulnerability. When Anne flees the school, her world expands, and Raine is left behind. Arserio's compassionate portrayal of these unforgettable characters is extraordinary. M.M.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-05-24
An ill-at-ease schoolgirl at a 19th-century boarding school finds love with her swashbuckling roommate.
In the latest of her fact-based historical novels, Donoghue strikes an unabashedly romantic, dreamlike tone with an opening line deliberately evocative of Rebecca. “Last night I went to the Manor again,” Eliza Raine writes to her former lover, Anne Lister, a decade after the two met in 1805 as teenage students at King’s Manor in York. Sent from Madras to England at age 6, the product of a “country marriage” between an Indian woman and an East India Company employee, Eliza is painfully aware of how her brown skin and illegitimacy mark her out among her privileged classmates even though her father’s death has left her heir to a modest fortune. She does her best to be the perfect student—until Lister arrives and is placed in her garret room. Self-confident, rule-breaking Lister both fascinates and frightens Raine, from her insistence that they call each other by their surnames like schoolboys to her casual disrespect for the teachers. Yet Raine comes to relish the spirit of adventure her new friend has brought into her life, and eventually the two embark on an ecstatic physical relationship. The story of the girls’ deepening bond is told in third-person chapters interspersed with Raine’s anguished letters to Lister, in which it quickly becomes clear that at age 24 Raine has been confined for some time to an asylum. We don’t know why until the very end, but it’s clear in the school chapters that her growing sense of self-worth is bound up in her love for Lister and might not survive their parting. Donoghue draws a wonderfully rich portrait of boarding school life, both a mirror of the outside world’s social hierarchies and a hothouse of complex interactions among girls striving to become women. As always, her narrative is grounded in sharp observation, strong characters, and nice period detail. She also tenderly evokes passion between two young women, though Raine’s perpetual insecurity and timidity eventually become as wearying for the reader as we suspect they may have for Lister.
Not quite on the level of Donoghue’s very best work but nonetheless a treat for her many fans.
