Are fictional lesbians always miserable?
When I first came out and started anxiously reading the “Sapphic canon”, I feared that was the case. Classics such as The Well of Loneliness, The Color Purple, Stone Butch Blues, or indeed Sappho’s poetry, told me that falling in love with a woman could be profound and beautiful, but it would not be fun. Sapphic love stories were defined by longing, yearning and angst. Often, women died.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good yearn. But not all the time. Happily, the more LGBTQ+ love stories are told and encouraged, the more variety of representation can flourish. The way sapphists are portrayed is increasingly permitted to be as multifaceted and unique as real life.
One of the best things about being a writer of queer romcoms is that I get to create my own, unabashedly joyous, kind of Sapphic love stories. In My Own Worst Enemy, my leading ladies Emmy and Mae are rival actors who keep fighting for the same few productions casting a “short-haired lesbian”. It’s camp, it’s silly, and it’s got a scene where they stage-fight as sexy Shakespearean pirates – because to me, that’s the definition of sapphism.
Specifically, I wanted to write a love story about two butches. Lesbian and bisexual characters are still rare, but within that, butch or masculine-of-centre characters are practically non-existent. If butches are ever depicted in love, they’re seemingly inevitably paired with a femme. And that’s lovely, but as a butch who fancies butches, frankly, I wanted some wish-fulfilment. (Yes, butch readers, I am single!) Emmy and Mae are not hard, defiant, and hyper-sexualised butches, but like those I know and love, soft, playful, anxious little sweethearts. I hope readers fall in love with them too.
In narrowing down my recommendations of Sapphic love stories, I want to provide an alternative for my worried younger self: so here are 10 books that affirm that Sapphic love can be one of life’s greatest pleasures.
1. I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston
McQuiston writes brilliant New Adult romantic comedies with punchy concepts, adorable characters and delightful dialogue and this is my absolute favourite. A month before high school graduation, the perfect principal’s daughter kisses three people and disappears, leaving behind pink letters with clues to her whereabouts. Her academic rival is determined to be the one who finds her – to prove she’s cleverer, of course, not because she’s secretly in love with her.
2. Infamous by Lex Croucher
You might think the most unhappy sapphists are those living in past historical eras, but that’s not the case in Croucher’s riotous romps. In Regency-era Infamous, 22-year-old Eddie is so busy trying to impress a charismatic rival of Lord Byron with her writing that she doesn’t realise regular “kissing practice” with best friend Rose might not be completely platonic. Expect charmingly bonkers characters, irreverent escapism, and non-stop witticisms.
3. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor
I was grinning by the end of the first paragraph. A heady blend of erudite, sexy, and gossipy, reading this makes you feel horny and a bit smug. Like a modern Orlando, Paul is a shapeshifter in 1990s America, transforming body and identities between a dapper young fag in men-only clubs, and Polly, who falls in love with an activist dyke at a women–only festival. Paul’s very fluidity feels deeply Sapphic to me, and whatever body they’re in, they delight in it. Hot!
4. Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby
These unaffected, personal essays from Irby make you feel rather like you’re still on the internet. Irby’s relationship with her wife is peppered throughout her observations of modern American life, offering glimpses into the everyday joys of shared domesticity – such as getting drunk at your local on a weeknight, making kombucha, and recharging your crystals – and celebrating love by taking the piss out of it.
5. In at the Deep End by Kate Davies
After sleeping with a woman for the first time (the best sex of her life), Julia skips out and thinks: “Gay clubs were my clubs now. Carhartt trousers, rainbows, team sports, But I’m a Cheerleader, vegetarian food [...] some of the best things in the world belonged to me. Lucky, lucky, lucky me.” Through the story’s various romantic twists and turns, the real love is perhaps Julia’s discovery of sapphism itself.
6. Wild Things by Laura Kay
Every Sapphic I know wants to move to the countryside and live on a commune, taking cute photos of their chickens. Thankfully, that’s exactly what the cast of Wild Things do. Amid befriending the neighbours, going wild swimming and renovating the ramshackle house for a sensational cottagecore party, there’s also plenty of her heroine El pining over the best friend she’s always been secretly in love with. Here, sapphism feels familiar and wild all at once.
7. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
Talking of the transformational potential of queer sex, let’s enjoy the moment in Alison Bechdel’s iconic graphic novel where, sleeping with a woman for the first time at university, Alison pledges to change her major to Joan. In this “tragicomic” grief and bittersweetness mingle with mischief and delight, and I always linger on the panel where child Alison first sees a butch woman: “like a traveler in a foreign country who runs into someone from home [..] I recognized her with a surge of joy.”
8. Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar
This warm-hearted Young Adult romance ticks classic tropes including fake dating, grumpy/sunshine and kissing in the rain, but stars Bengali sapphists. Amid the challenges Hani and Ishu face – biphobia, toxic friendship and being the only two south Asian girls in their school – their love story remains tender and sweet. It’s also lovely to see a family shown supporting their queer child, when Hani’s parents wholeheartedly embrace her intersectionality as a bisexual Muslim.
9. Sedating Elaine by Dawn Winter
Frances is on the run from both her angry drug dealer and her lustful girlfriend Elaine. To raise money and allow herself time away from constant sex, she decides there’s only one thing she can do: sedate Elaine. A delightfully unconventional love story, where Frances’s heartbreak from her previous girlfriend is woven throughout. A worthy nominee for the Comedy women in print prize, not only is the concept fun, Winter also has a knack for embedding jokes in a way that feels effortless and, like, actually funny.
10. Our World by Mary Oliver
If, like me, you met Oliver through Instagram quotes about nature, you may have missed her lovely love poetry – always addressed to a woman. Our World is a selection of photographs by her (then deceased) partner Molly Malone Cook, interwoven with Oliver’s text. It includes The Whistler, about when, after 30 years of cohabitation, she heard her love whistle for the first time: “As from the throat of a wild and cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, / the sounds warbled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.” Until Cook’s death, all Oliver’s books were dedicated to her. Like a true Sapphic, reading that obviously makes me cry.
• My Own Worst Enemy by Lily Lindon is published by Aria. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
