Simply Irresistible

Mea Culpa

Eileen the Crow isn't who I was thinking of (thanks Velvette), it's Djura. Eileen is someone else I don't recall as well.

First Thoughts

Greaves does a good job book-ending the first volume. Last chapter (in the online version) we ended up having kind of a split-climax. I've been informed that the physical book (which I will be purchasing as soon as I'm not trying actively to get rid of possessions) has a longer fight-scene and a better pitch from Bea, but regardless, it was very slick writing to elide the fight scene between Declan and Stef.

The fight's stakes are simply absent. With the Dorley PMC (T-shirt idea btw. Make them on technical fabrics. Wear them to the gym, make new friends and terrify new strangers) standing by, and with the watchful panopticon of the titular sisters, it's kind of implausible for, really, any meaningful outcome.

So, this time around, we get the same kind of snapshots-oriented writing from the first chapter that I liked so much. This time, it's roughly framed and explained by Bea's reminiscence. As an aside, I deeply hope that she at least had ice in that coffee mug.

My tireless and valorous road dogz, this time we are discussing Simply Irresistible.

Recap

I'm going to keep this kind of condensed (Ed: Are you? That sounds implausible) so that I get the room to discuss the chapter as a whole a bit more, and likewise the chance to start to unpack some of the broader thoughts I have about the text so far.

This chapter volleys between 3 distinct periods, 1988, 2004, and 2019.

1988 July 30

Bea is out on the town, such as it is, and meets Annie. She is taken back to Dorley under the ancien regime under threat of exposure, and we get a sense of Dorley's origins as a, worse kind of a place.

This strikes as a partial explanation of why Bea fusses over Christine so much earlier in the novel. Being out and about was litearlly liberatory for Bea because it was, uh, all basement all the time, and so being out in the world might be so for Christine as well.

The predecessors to Aunt Bea go a long way to making her more sympathetic, naturally -- maybe for her erasing David and becoming Bea was a good deal.

2019 November 9

I forgot that Bea hadn't met any of the other basement-dwellers, but of course not. It sounds like I may have spoken too soon about Declan's death. The darkness, the ghost-light, evoke a theater and a set change.

And yet Declan is still "condemned" per the text.

I’m here to tell you how it ends

But what about telling meeeeeeee how it ends???

2004 August 8

Returning to the scene of the crime is always dangerous, but returning to the scene of a crime against yourself is especially precarious.

So, the sponsors used to be cis-women, for one, I'm gathering. Diversity win: your kidnapping point-of-contact shares your trauma.

Grief never quite fades; it lingers in the spaces it was first forged, and she can’t afford, today of all days, to be weak. She dismisses the memory. Dismisses them all. All she needs is the hatred.

It can feel good to be angry.

Still pretty obscured what happened here on second read, but it seems like there's a debauched aristocratic order at its root.

2019 November 9

Gin out of a coffee mug.

Hoo boy.

That's a tough look, Bea. I at least hope there's some ice in there baby.

This chapter gives a little bit of context to her motives or at least her mindset in the previous chapter.

The sum of her choices.

We have a lot of uncertainty around what happened to Bea in the Major and Blair years, but at some point she had the chance to be David, or to be Bea. And she chose Bea. So, in a sense that maybe the other sisters don't share, Bea transitioned the old-fashioned way (by being kidnapped by a cabal of Br*tish aristocracy and escaping.) That might be where she gets her insight into Stef's psychology in the previous chapter.

2004 August 8

Boardroom drama ensues.

I really dig this kind of a plot device. It's a nice onion of nested organizations, expanding outward, and I like it. Not a lot of authors are as intent on sketching conspiracy as Greaves is, and I've got my red yarn and corkboard out.

It sounds like Grandmother is going to still be on the board as an antagonist for reformed Dorley. Kim Stanley Robinson writes about "götterdämmerung capitalism" in The Ministry for the Future, and as an American in 2025, uh, yeah, that is certainly something that people do.

2019 November 9

When do they come to pick him up?

So Declan is still alive. I'm trying to think of what happens to a person like him now. I suspect I'll find out. I doubt it'll be gentler than Dorley.

She’s been convinced since Stef got here that she’d been assigned a nice boy by mistake

Glad Pippa is handling it. I don't think this was particularly well fleshed-out in this draft; it sounds like the full book spills more ink on this though. I'll be interested to see what Greaves does differently there.

The thing with Stef? Not your finest hour, Auntie.

Surprised to see that actually, from Maria. Then again, what do I even know about Maria? That she's the next generation or so after Bea, and that she's a reformer.

We’re not going to tell Melissa, I imagine.

Good, yes, keep more secrets. That has worked, every time, for the characters in this novel to date. I will watch your progress closely, new raft of internecine secret plots.

'You should know,' Maria says, 'Stef prefers he for now. Hence my… pronoun confusion.'

You and me both, sister.

I found the exchange between Bea and Maria on Christine revealing. Christine and Stef are, in their own right, kind of set up to be to Bea and Maria as Bea and Maria were to Grandmother and e.g. Frankie. There's a, ah, structural similarity to the generational turnover that sees new gender norms emerge I guess. First everyone's wearing their capes and swords and coming of age at 15, and before you know it, bingo-bango-bongo you're wearing a T-shirt and growing a beard.

2004 August 8

I am people

We see Elle helping to coup Dorley.

Something I've neglected a bit, partially out of cultural differences, partially because this isn't "a lower-upper-class American reads Dorley", is the role of class in the text. Seeing it illustrated more explicitly always helps of course, but I wonder how many things I've missed in between.

For instance, I recognize the club that Bea escapes to as a close analog to the bar in my college town (literally, "The Keg", RIP. I'd say pour one out, but the linoleum was probably 12 proof by the time that place closed) but I don't feel any special class-based attitude about it, like the fondness Bea feels for the rubble under the Anthill. Sometimes class emerges as an explicit theme. Earlier on Bea called Dorley a "finishing school" within an upper class university.

I imagine that there's a lot of British subtext that I'm missing, as an American. Because, we have class here, obviously, as a capitalist and until-recently-liberal society, but historically it's been a little more complected with race here, and a little bit more binary; "working class" vs "business class" in the Midwest, for example.

I was a shoplifter

Interesting to see Greaves hang a lampshade on the fine line where incarceration becomes just. I've been thinking of this book as first and foremost about gender and transition, but it works just as well as a primarily carceral story. You lose the right to bodily autonomy in prison. You may be put in solitary confinement, losing access to any social belonging, and to your sanity. All because of a criminality that is increasingly dubious and ill-established by any well-run judiciary.

If I have a point, it's that Dorley is more multifaceted than I would've expected as "a trans thing." That's obviously a main focal point of it, and if I've been myopic it's not the book's fault. Just, looking around and noticing that there's plenty else going on.

2019 November 9

She’s trying to reform him.

I do kind of see myself in both Declan and Aaron. I've never done anything as bad as either of them have, but I have to wonder if that's just down to good genes, good luck, and good friends outside my gender cohort. Having a woman as a friend can do a lot to help a man be a human, and if that's what Stef is for Aaron, I mean, it's a little bit late perhaps, but that's a genuine phenomenon I think. Healthy men aren't meant to be sequestered, we're supposed to interact with different kinds of people and learn how to be their friends too.

So, I don't know that it undermines Dorley's programme really, to have Stef succeed. If anything it's just a sign that some of the energy speant sponsoring could be split into Dorley community outreach. Get Christine to go make Bionicles with The Youths or something.

In here we also get,

'I’m concerned about Grandmother,' Bea says. 'I think she’s going to try something.'

Which is, presumably, going to be the next big arc for our story. It's fascinating to see Bea so intimate with someone. I hope we'll see them over the years in the next volume -- humanizing Bea is a great way to end the book and a great affordance for the next one.

Errant Thoughts

Smyth-Farrow

God, so Dorley was a place of human trafficking before Bea. That's so dark. Yeah, in light of this chapter she's practically Joan d'Arc.

Bits and Bobs

I wonder what Bea shoplifted?

What's Next?

I'm going to keep reading The Sisters of Dorley, and keep writing Welcome to Dudely House. This is a good book, and I like it so far. Greaves does a lot of up-front writing about gender (obviously) but I think there's a deeper look to be had on how she uses space, intentional detail, and class. So, I'm going to try to give those elements the attention that they deserve a little bit more, going forward.

Anyway, next time I'm going to do a little more of a recap. There are a few things that have been percolating for me about the book, and I want to give them the room to breathe without pressing on. But after that, I'll keep going.