olivia

yesterday i read the novella, olivia, by dorothy strachey. strachey was the sister of lytton strachey, a well-known friend of virginia woolf and the bloomsbury group. dorothy only wrote one novel, i.e., olivia. this book is an interesting little thing by a little known author, it is about a young student and her passionate "love" for her female teacher at a french boarding school. (i write love this way because her love for this teacher, while very real to her, has all the qualities of adolescent passion and intensity. who knows if these feeling are really love...maybe, maybe not). while nothing explicitly sexual every happens and it actually ends in some heartbreak, it is an interesting study in that intensity that comes with our first school crushes. the fact that these feelings were between two females only made it more interesting. i've never read a book that dealt with a main character who had same-sex tendencies and i am glad that now i can say that i have. no matter your opinion on the issue, this book reveals the reality of feeling that truly can and does exist between two people. while it's not the best written novel i've ever written, one thing that strachey definitely succeeds at is portraying olivia's earnestness, intense need and desire, and heartbreak over eventual rejection regarding her teacher, mademoiselle julie. a worthy and enlightening read.