LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE A Guardian Best Book of the Year A New York Times Editors' Choice Selection “A work of stirring genius, a catalogue of intimacies and inventions, desires and dreams." —Jacob Brogan, Washington Post An exhilarating debut from a radiant new voice, After Sappho reimagines the intertwined lives of feminists at the turn of the twentieth century. “The first thing we did was change our names. We were going to be Sappho,” so begins this intrepid debut novel, centuries after the Greek poet penned her lyric verse. Ignited by the same muse, a myriad of women break from their small, predetermined lives for seemingly disparate paths: in 1892, Rina Faccio trades her needlepoint for a pen; in 1902, Romaine Brooks sails for Capri with nothing but her clotted paintbrushes; and in 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: “I want to make life fuller and fuller.” Writing in cascading vignettes, Selby Wynn Schwartz spins an invigorating tale of women whose narratives converge and splinter as they forge queer identities and claim the right to their own lives. A luminous meditation on creativity, education, and identity, After Sappho announces a writer as ingenious as the trailblazers of our past. “This book is splendid: Impish, irate, deep, courageous. . . . Brava!”—Lucy Ellmann, author of Ducks, Newburyport

NUBClub did not have a positive view of Schwartz's take on the lesbian artist clique of the early twentieth century. There were certainly a lot of interesting facts in this story, things that we were surprised to find we didn't know. But the history was literally the only thing we thought this novel had going for it. The first issue is that the novel bounces rapidly between characters, but never really gives us a clear vision of each character, so none of us could keep track of who was who. There's also almost no action in the story -- time passes and critical historic events occur, but they don't have much on an impact on what the characters are doing. Of course, there's a clear argument that all of this is in the spirit of the story. Given that Sappho is center of the work, the idea that the story is fragmented and about an idyllic and fragile culture makes sense. It just doesn't make it an engaging story. It also doesn't help that much of the best writing of the book is paraphrased quotes from the historic subjects. But the biggest issue may have been that the book is a deeply insider work. If you don't know who Virginia Woolf or Romaine Brooks or Rina Faccio, this book is not explaining it to you and those sections just drift by without connect. Basically the only character we felt connected with was Woolf and we couldn't help but wonder if that was because we already knew so much about her. That's where we landed on this novel -- anything good about it comes from the history of her subjects and our own pre-existing knowledge of them. Schwartz isn't doing anything but referring to that knowledge is a scattered and implied way, and the only value you're getting out of it is what you the reader bring. Save yourself the trouble and skip this novel; the actual histories of these incredible women is much more worthy of your time.