Mrs S

Queer love and intense desire in an English boarding school where a butch outsider joins the ranks and falls into an affair with the headmaster’s wife, Mrs. S. 

It’s intensely queer in its romance and sex with the protagonist at least trans masculine adjacent even if it isn’t tackled head-on; there are some very thoughtful lines on her adoption of masculinity and use of her binder, but transness itself isn’t tackled.

“The PE teacher might be flirting. I have lost sight of what is straight and what is not straight.”

“Straight in the pocket my friend, tell me that’s not sapphic, clams in the pocket, fucking clams.”

“We are in public. Unable to take me in her mouth, she imitates my finger, our kitchen scene. This is what it is to be wanted. Loving her will be impossible. There is nothing I can do to stop it.”

Yet despite lines which I either find hilarious or enchanting (not to mention a long section about how the moon is a lesbian), I have trouble grasping this style of prose - the stream of consciousness - and the lack of quotation marks or any indication of who is speaking or if it’s thought, speech or direction meant I had too many occurrences of having to re-read paragraphs to figure out context. I don’t think enchantment has to be the enemy of clarity.

So a great book if you want some queer longing and like that prose style. But might be an issue otherwise.