Learned By Heart
The deeply moving historical novel from the award-winning author of Room
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3.5 • 8 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
The heartbreaking story of the love of two women – Anne Lister, the real-life inspiration behind Gentleman Jack, and her first love, Eliza Raine – from the bestselling author of Room and The Wonder.
'A rich and spellbinding 19th-century story of forbidden love' – The Independent
'Donoghue evokes a relationship that is convincing and exquisitely touching' – The Guardian
In 1805, at a boarding school in York, two fourteen-year-old girls first meet.
Eliza Raine, the orphan daughter of an Indian mother, keeps herself apart from the other girls, tired of being picked out for being different. Anne Lister, a gifted troublemaker, is determined to conquer the world, refusing to bow to society’s expectations of what a woman can do.
As they fall in love, the connection they forge will remain with them for the rest of their lives.
Full of passion and heartbreak, evocative and wholly unique, Learned by Heart is a beautiful and moving historical novel from acclaimed author Emma Donoghue.
Shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Prize
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Tenderness and heat, tentativeness and urgency—Learned by Heart tells the story of the beginning of love. In it, Emma Donoghue fictionalises the real-life love affair between Anne Lister (aka Gentleman Jack, on whose later life the BBC series of that name is based) and her schoolmate Eliza Raine, the orphaned daughter of an Indian mother, treated differently from her peers because of her race. Their relationship starts at boarding school, and as the pair simmer and spark, and strain against the strictures of their time and place, the novel is rich with detail about what was expected of a certain class of 19th-century girl being prepared for marriage. Interspersed are letters from Raine to Lister 10 years later, when their lives are almost unrecognisable. As Donoghue says in her author’s note, though Lister is now well known, Raine’s own extraordinary life and her part in Lister’s story have been nowhere near so well illuminated. This novel, a welcome corrective, is also enthralling in its own right.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Donoghue (Haven) returns with an impressive story inspired by Eliza Raine, who was written about in Anne Lister's coded diaries about her lesbian love life. At the beginning of the 19th century at a chilly boarding school in Yorkshire, 14-year-olds Eliza and Anne share a garret near the servants' quarters. Born in India to an Indian mother and an East India Company man, Eliza has been sent to England for "finishing" by her father, who is subsequently lost at sea, leaving her and her sister with a small fortune and in the care of guardians. Anne is vibrant, defiant, and smarter than most of the other "Middles" in their class, and she soon draws the observant but reserved Eliza into her orbit. In Anne's presence, Eliza grows in confidence and the two become inseparable as their friendship turns sexual. The bonds that form between the two girls ultimately lead to Eliza's tragic undoing, and she ends up in a mental asylum. Donoghue makes good use of her choice to delve into Eliza's perspective rather than Anne's by exploring the steep cost for her protagonist of tethering herself to a rebel. This melancholic love story is imbued with deep feeling and generosity toward its characters.
