excerpt:
Sandrine dropped into the chair beside me and stretched her back dramatically. I took the opportunity to admire the view, as I was sure she intended. “Ugh!” She wiggled her fingers high overhead. “Never be a compositor, Mylène my beauty. You’ll have to typeset a scholar’s list of sources in eight point, half of them in Greek.”
“I don’t speak a word of Greek,” I pointed out, though it didn’t need saying. When would a girl from a little Normandy village have learned such a thing as Greek? Sandrine was the one who had grown up in this printshop two streets from the Quartier Latin, not me. I had the impression that she didn’t read it terribly well herself, come to that; the king’s censors had been striking out texts so eagerly recently that the shop had been taking on jobs we might ordinarily have farmed out.
➤ as one would expect from the venue, this short story is about historical lesbians!
➤ specifically, historical lesbians working in a parisian printshop in 1830 (2 years before Les Mis is set, if that's relevant for you)
➤ ahhhh I love all the different women in this story, their relationships with each other and their work and their beliefs
➤ and the main character a provincial girl who's finding a place for herself and coming to understand the world of revolutionary paris she's found herself in!
➤ I also love how real and grounded the printshop work is that they all do
➤ it was great from start to finish <3
➤ and yes the author is a friend but I'm not biased at all!!
➤ 5k words in length
➤ available as written text and as podcast; I have been told that the podcast version is excellent too.
