A LINE YOU HAVE TRACED, lesbian-led Cloud Atlas riposte, only done truly well

A LINE YOU HAVE TRACED
ROISIN DUNNETT
The Feminist Press at CUNY (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Cloud Atlas meets This Is How You Lose the Time War in this gorgeous speculative novel that explores how a mysterious red journal connects three women born centuries apart in East London.

In the Jewish East End of post-World War I London, Bea, a young shopkeeper's wife, is visited by an uncanny figure she believes is an angel. She tries to understand the meaning of these visits as the life she is building with her new husband is threatened by fascists who are increasingly targeting her friends and neighbors.

Kay spends nights partying with her friends in contemporary East London's underground queer scene, where one of them is gaining fame as a drag queen. She entertains herself by imagining that people she passes on the street are time travelers who have come back in time specifically to visit her. As she becomes infatuated with the brilliant O, she discovers an aged red notebook that seems to be the journal of an ancestor who was also visited by a mystical being.

One hundred years in the future, against a backdrop of climate emergency and violent oppression, Ess lives off the grid as part of a collective that's planning for the end of human life on Earth. After uncovering an ancient worn red book in an archive, she is invited to a nearby commune to help with a critical journey into the past to possibly help save the present.

Epic in scope, with unforgettable characters and a rare clarity of vision, A Line You Have Traced asks profound questions about how we might survive and engage with the world, and with each other before it’s too late.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I was not the biggest booster of Cloud Atlas, book or film. Ambitious, complex, occasionally obscure...I've mellowed in the decade-plus since it showed up and no longer assert "obscurantist"...that work was not for me.

Maybe add lesbians and I'll find its plot charming?

Tuna, Mackerel and Sardine (the c-a-t-s) almost derailed the exercise in rehabilitation.

The past, present, and future gag is retreaded for this iteration with queer text, in place of the far more prevalent subtext, and set in motion by the unfolding traumas of each era's culture and all leading into the future's existential changes threatening civilization. It works well because it simultaneously provides perspective and focuses the reader onto the severity of the stakes overall.

Turns out adding lesbians, just like in life, fixes most things.

No fifth star from me because, do I need to say it, c-a-t-s. Be impressed and amazed it didn't knock my usual four-and-a-half stars off! The author's got solid writing chops and a very accurate story-laser to get four stars out of me. Telling a story of how each generation feels it's meeting its challenges, showing how they always interconnect, and never giving a single indication that any one of these characters could be straight and still have the same story, is good work indeed.

Go get one. It will please the weirdos who don't hate cats as much as I do solidly more than even me.