Book review: Relatively Norma
The LGBT reading challenge continues and this month I’ve read Relatively Norma by Anna Livia. Described as a “widely read lesbian feminist writer and linguistic theorist”, she was active in London during the 1980s and she was apparently “one of the most widely read of that generation”. Relatively Norma , published by Onlywomen Press in 1982, was her first novel and “a wry exploration of coming out”. As the blurb on the back cover reveals, Minnie, a lesbian feminist from London, travels to Australia to see her mother and come out to her. That’s it. 220 pages and nothing really happens. Even the coming out only sort of happens. I really wish I could write something positive about this book but I didn’t enjoy it one bit. The narrative is almost non-existent. There are many characters, mostly female – Minnie, her mother Beryl, her sister Ingrid, her foster-sister Laura and a couple of Australian feminists. All have their issues, presented in a messy and tangled way which seems to have n...