But she contorted anew, refocused the phone on her face (now visibly strained with determination), and humbled herself before the technology of the day—which everyone else used for purposes mundane and mercenary, but which Sasha was using for the highest purpose: that of seduction. If a beach read is like eating a tasty little snack, reading Dykette was like huffing drugs: noxious and mildly euphoric. Lou seems the most comfortable with themselves, and Jules is the most pretentious, like she always has to try too hard.

Davis’s Dykette reads like a taxonomy of queer theory, references, and history, while offering up wholly new words and takes on contemporary lesbian life.Our protagonist is Sasha, a femme lesbian in her twenties who loves all things girly and is here for the toxic womanhood the average magazine sells to usually straight women. This novel is written in one semicolorful declarative sentence after another and there is honestly something appealing about the pah-pah-pah rhythm set up by this kind of prose, like the appeal of reading something written by a teenager who draws little hearts above the i’s instead of a dot, and although I found the story pointless and shallow maybe it’s purposefully pointless and shallow, like those pop art Campbell soup cans that were already passé the first time you saw one, and although this novel is not as interesting as the arrangement of old chewing gums you happen to notice on the sidewalk as you’re walking along, it almost is. I also didn’t mind the referencing of external texts in true Iowa MFA form—if you liked this aspect of In the Dream House or Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, this might interest you. A novel that can accomplish that complexity while also being wickedly funny, achingly sensitive, readable as hell--simply put, Jenny Fran Davis is a talent. Jesse would think bristly nipples were hot, so she snapped a half-hearted picture, but the image on the screen horrified her, and she deleted it quickly.

Straight people are going to be downright confused by a lot of this book and queer people are probably going to fight about it. The Big Chill goes gay in Davis’s raunch-com about six queer Brooklynites spending the holidays at a Hudson farmhouse.

Or maybe instead of taken seriously, it can have an impact: change something in the reader or mean something to someone. Mediated by the Grinch filter, Sasha’s face was steely, its aspirational wickedness intercepting a darling, doe-eyed innocence. This book will be hit or miss for most people, and maybe even a little incomprehensible to the cis/hets. finally not a boresome “wlw” (fuck that term) book with closeted lesbians having internalised homophobia! The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.