We’re back for the 3rd ever QUEER GIRL BOOK CLUB, friends! And this time, we’re reviewing Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. This book is described as: “A highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls—a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit.” Yes. 1,000 times yes.
Please know that spoilers will follow after the cut, and because we compare the narrator of this book to Gossip Girl (xoxo), we will be using Gossip Girl gifs to help us narrate our review. Please enjoy! Sort of like we know you’re enjoying this image of a little kitten next to a big book.
Emily: I chose this book because I heard "sapphic comedy horror" and I was like where do I sign up?
Kelli: Yeah, it promised something excellent and spoiler, I think it delivered.
Emily: Yeah, I really liked this one. I have to say when I picked it, I don't think I was fully aware of how long it was. But the subject matter is SO up my alley, that I wasn't really worried about it. Like horror-comedy is kind of my favorite thing. Mix that with a boarding school and lesbians and I'm done.
Kelli: Yeah, and normally for a side project I wouldn't be like "yes let's do a 600+ page book," but we had already kind of decided on it when we realized the length and at that point neither of us wanted to turn back.
Emily: It did take me a while to read just because OTHER BOOKS kept getting in the way. Looking at you, Docile.
Emily reading Docile
Kelli: And I'll say that even though it was long, and it did feel long, it felt long in that good way - where you settle into a book and live in the world of it for a while and you still aren't really ready to leave when it's over.
Emily: Yes, agree. In fact, in some ways I wanted more.
Kelli: Me too, I could have luxuriated in this book for several hundred more pages. Pages that might have answered a few lingering questions I have, but we'll get to that, lol.
Emily: Yes. So where to begin? Should we talk about the contemporary vs. the historical? Because we discussed this a lot as we were reading.
Kelli: Sure!
Emily: So a lot of the reviews just on Goodreads I saw complaining that the contemporary story was not as interesting as the historical story, and I totally disagree. How did you feel about the two storylines and going back and forth between them?
Kelli: I agree with your disagree. I enjoyed both storylines, but I was definitely more invested in the contemporary storyline. I don't know if it's because I tend to gravitate towards contemporary fiction over historical fiction (which we also discussed), but I was having more fun with the modern day characters, and what was happening to them felt more urgent. I also love to read about movie making and Hollywood because I find that kind of stuff endlessly fascinating. The contemporary sections of this book reminded me of The Remaking in more ways than one (which we covered on the podcast).
Emily: Yes. I agree. This did have The Remaking vibes, especially with the way the horror of the past is repeating itself with these film stars and crew.
Kelli: As for the past storyline, I didn't dislike it, and I wasn't necessarily rushing through those sections, but I didn't find Libby or Alex as interesting as characters. I think I also was interested in Clara and Flo (especially because Flo sounded so hot) so when it turned out that the past sections were not at all about them, I was like, wait... what about them tho.
Emily: Yeah that really surprised me, because the movie they're making is about Clara and Flo. And the book is called Plain Bad Heroines, which was Clara and Flo's little club. But they are barely in the book.
Kelli: Right. And in a way, maybe that's for the better - like maybe it would've felt more repetitive to be doing their story twice.
Emily: That’s true.
Kelli: I think the idea was that what was happening with Libby and Alex was more of a secret history that was never fully revealed.
Emily: It's not necessarily a bad surprise. It was just surprising. For me though, I think the most interesting revelation in the past sections was that Alex and Libbie weren't actually this great love story? Or at least not to Libbie they weren't. Like in a lot of ways, it's just that Alex happened to be there, and Libbie got stuck with her.
Or girlfriend
Kelli: Right. Libbie didn't want to be tied to anyone, which was why she didn't want to have a child or be married in the first place, and she has this realization that even though she and Alex aren't technically married, she is basically stuck in the same kind of life she was trying to avoid. But I did feel bad for Alex.
Emily: Yes. I found this really interesting. And if we're looking at this from a lesbian fiction perspective, that's a really interesting relationship dynamic to present, because a lot of times lesbians get stereotyped as being hardcore monogamous.
Kelli: Right. And Alex dies in this tragic way, but their story isn't the typical 'two women fall in love and one or both of them dies leaving the other one alone forever with her heartbreak' - it's more complicated than that. And it CAN be complicated, because this book presents something that we discussed in our review of Happiest Season - a world where there are all kinds of lesbian relationships, not just the one that we are resting all of our hopes on.
Emily: Yes. And this isn't to say Libby doesn't care for Alex. Because she does. She loves Alex very much.
Kelli: I want to talk about Mary MacLane. GUESS WHAT Y’ALL. She’s real. This was a revelation for me, and maybe that is because I am an uninformed pleb.
Emily: I feel dumb cause we had no idea.
Kelli: Yeah, like as I started this book I briefly thought about looking it up, but then I was like 'well the book is fiction so probably this is fictional too,' and I didn't bother to look again until I finished and was glancing through Danforth's acknowledgements sections and she thanks MacLane. The book provides a lot of little footnotes about things that happened in history, and the narrator treats them as things we "probably already know," whether it's about MacLane, or in the present sections, about the events surrounding celebrities.
I also thought it was interesting that for so much of the book we're led to believe that her writings are the thing that set off this whole chain of events, but at the end of the day she is exactly what she called herself - not the main character of the story, just a ~plain bad heroine.~
Emily: Also she wasn't even a good lesbian role model, because at the end of her life she was like "yeah homosexuality is probably bad."
Kelli: Right, and when Clara and Flo died she was kind of like "oh weird, whoopsie."
Kelli: But I definitely want to check out her writing, particularly the book referenced throughout this novel, which is called The Story of Mary MacLane.
Emily: Let’s talk about the narrator!
Kelli: Yes the narrator! WHO IS SHE? That's one secret she'll never tell.
Emily: I saw a review call her a Victorian Gossip Girl. And I was like "Yes. For sure."
Kelli: Yeah, she is omniscient and snarky in the exact same way. And I was impressed by the fact that while this same narrator has her own voice for the entire book, she is also able to convey the voices of each of our heroines in their own sections. They all felt like pretty distinctive characters with their own thoughts and motivations. Sometimes with an omniscient narrator stuff starts to run together but that wasn't the case here.
Emily: Yes. I was really into it. And I loved the footnotes.
Kelli: Same!
Emily: Like, for instance, at the end, there's a part where Harper said she was glad to see Audrey. And Audrey says she's glad to see Harper too. And Harper's like, "I don't know if she meant it." And then there's a little asterisk. And a footnote that just says, "She did."
Kelli: Yeah, I liked stuff like that. Or at the beginning when she's talking about Charles and the footnote says "Did I tell you that Charles had named his car America? I hate him so much."
So yeah, I'll say I was a little bit disappointed that we don't get a reveal about who this narrator actually is. I guess my theory now is that she is just the collective ghost of all the dead women? Lol.
Emily: I don't know. It didn't bother me because I didn't think we'd get a reveal. This kind of narrator speaking directly to the reader is I think more common in older novels. And since this book is sort of trying to have a Victorian Gothic feel to it, I think that's part of what Danforth was going for here. But make it contemporary. But I also understand wanting that reveal. I guess my response to that though would be "it doesn't matter."
Kelli: Yeah, I think the only reason I felt that way is because of something the narrator says early on, in the first chapter: "And who, you ask, am I? [...] I can promise you that by the time we reach the end, you'll know me much better than I know you." And then in a parenthetical, "I do now ask for your trust in me to fill in the gaps as I see fit. I can see quite a lot from this vantage point." So it just intrigued me.
Emily: But she is right. We do know her better than she knows us. And I mean with Gossip Girl, since we're making the comparison. I kind of wish we'd never found out. Because... the truth was disappointing af and didn't make any sense.
Kelli: Yeah, I definitely am not saying that this is a flaw. Normally I'm not like, WHO IS THIS. But the fact that she referred to her own vantage point made me think, I guess she is dead. So which dead girl is she? I just want to know!
Emily: I know! It's okay!
Kelli: Agreed about Gossip Girl lol. Though that just seems like a classic case of "when we started this we hadn't decided the answer to this question yet."
Emily: But also. Obviously Gossip Girl is Veronica Mars.
Emily: Should we talk about the present timeline?
Kelli: Let’s do it.
Emily: So in the current timeline, we have three main characters: Merritt, Harper, and Audrey. Merritt is the author of the book about Brookhants that's being adapted into a movie. Harper is the MOVIE STAR. And Audrey is the b-movie actress that stumbled her way into a lead role in this movie,
Kelli: Yes, Audrey is a product of nepotism.
Emily: But even still. Her mom is also sort of a trashy movie star. Like one of her mom's movies is best known for having the longest scene with the most topless women in a movie ever.
Kelli: Yeah, and part of her mom's celebrity is also the fact that she had kind of a public breakdown moment.
Emily: Right. Since we're talking about surprises, one of the things that surprised me most about this story was how long it took them to actually get to Brookhants (the school).
Kelli: Yeah, me too. There's a lot of time spent in LA developing these characters. Which is not a bad thing, but I could have used more time at Brookhants too. Where is my 1k page book.
Emily: Yes like more scary shit happening at Brookhants and three hot lesbian women making out together please.
Kelli: Oh my god. When the threesome happened I was like, YES.
Emily: Right?
Kelli: That was not where I saw these relationships going at the beginning of the book but I was extremely here for it.
Emily: I really did think there would be something between Audrey and Harper but I thought it would be more of a triangle thing. Less of a circle.
Kelli: I think that's why I liked the contemporary storyline so much in general — because, as I said before, these three characters felt so distinctive to me, and were all really interesting in their own ways.
Emily: Yes I think we spend a lot more time developing the characters in the present storyline. Meanwhile, with Libbie, her character is like a plot reveal late in the novel.There's so much we don't know about her and then slowly come to know. Which is interesting, but that also means we just don't know her.
Kelli: Yeah, her motivations are not clear early on where there aren't really any surprises about who Harper, Merritt, and Audrey are as people — even when we get the sort-of-twist that Audrey is not the only one who's "playing" the other two. That part I had kind of assumed, though. Like, even when they have the discussion together, they're kind of like 'we all sort of knew this, didn't we?'
Emily: Yes.
Kelli: And I liked that too, that there didn't have to be this whole moment where Audrey reveals that she is a monster who is manipulating them, because as it turns out, they are all monsters, but also not. Which is kind of the point of the book.
Merritt, Audrey, and Harper competing for craziest bitch.
Emily: Yes, all of these characters were deeply flawed. Like real people are. And clearly it's all fine in the end because by the time we get to the premiere at the end of the movie, they're ready to team up and... GO BACK TO BROOKHANTS?
Kelli: WHERE IS MY SEQUEL?
Emily: I was going to ask. Do you think she might write a sequel?
Kelli: I don't know! I would be extremely down for that. But it would probably have to have a pretty different format considering so much of the past has been revealed to us. Another thing I wanted to mention about the contemporary storyline is the presence of social media, how omnipresent it is in a way that I think a lot of contemporary novels avoid because they fear seeming dated.
Emily: I love details that set a book in a specific time and place. If you worry too much about seeming dated, then you're going to end up with a story that's too vague and unrealistic.
Kelli: And I think the way this novel shows us how social media and fame interact with each other is very realistic. Like, everything about Harper felt so true to life.
Emily: Yes, agree. And one of the big "scary" moments happens with a cell phone and a livestream. Which I hadn't seen before.
Kelli: Right, certainly not in a book anyway. I think film has leaned into digital horror a bit more because of how visual it can be. But that scene worked really well for me. All of the horror scenes in this book were genuinely unsettling.
Emily: Yes. I think what was really working for me was the imagery. There's some imagery that repeats throughout the novel, so when you see that set up again, you're like "okay something is wrong.” It makes it scary before anything scary actually happens. Like the bees.
Kelli: Yes, definitely. Also, a lot of the horror scenes involve a tactile sensation that really places you in the moment and allows you to imagine it for yourself. Like touching rotten apples, or picking bugs out from between your teeth. Visceral stuff that you can immediately imagine and feel uncomfy about. Realizing you've been eating bugs or drinking gross moldy water really works for me on a horror level, lol.
Emily: Yes. Good job, book!
Kelli: Good job!
YAY QUEEN BOOK!
Kelli: Okay, so the one maybe not good job thing.
Emily: The ending?
Kelli: Yes.
Emily: Yeah we were confused.
Kelli: Not the contemporary ending, necessarily, because that part is fine. But the "reveal" between Libbie and Adelaide. I put reveal in quotation marks because we get this in a twist on the typical sort of "bwa ha ha, I am the villain and this has been my plan" speech delivered by Adelaide. I think maybe in trying to make it less ridiculous and transparent the way these reveals tend to be, Danforth maybe went too far in the opposite direction and as a result the explanation is fairly opaque.
Emily: Yeah I really felt like I was being an idiot and missed something. So then I asked Kelli, "Hey... psst... who's Simone?"
Kelli: Just to be clear to anyone reading this, we both read the speech multiple times and still had a hard time figuring out what exactly happened. Here is what I could gather: Simone was the originator of the curse, erased by history — she was the real reason the Rash brothers built the tower at Spite Manor. She came from the French Verrett family, the family of seers who Harold was involved with and who were responsible for convincing Libby to have Ava to "harness the power of the land." Apparently, Simone's parents were two women, and one of those women left her family in France to move to America with her partner and child. The family was Not Pleased about this. What I don't understand is like... what is the goal of this conglomerate of evil Seers?
Emily: Yeah I don’t get it. If we're missing something and you know the answer, do let us know, dear reader.
Kelli: Please. Or, if Emily Danforth wants to come on the podcast.
Emily: Let me just call her up.
Kelli: So yeah, Adelaide is one of the members of this family who are intent on... stirring shit up and punishing lesbians? But the people who fucked Simone over were two men???
Emily: Yeah… two really shitty men.
Kelli: So I am confused. So yeah, then Libbie drowns and no one ever really knows the truth of the curse. Or MAYBE she lives. That could be in the sequel. Anyway, this ending obviously didn't really work for either of us because it was really difficult to understand. Still, not really understanding it doesn't exactly ruin the journey of getting there for me. We've talked about this before in different contexts, but when it comes to horror, sometimes it's like... there's a curse, it fucks with people, that's all you need to know. Maybe the original motivation doesn't matter that much. We talked about this on both our Bly Manor AND Lovecraft Country episodes, lol.
Emily: Also Ava pops in at the end... and is like. Not a big deal? I don't know.
Kelli: Yeah, I didn't feel like Ava's presence was necessary. I think she was maybe the only part of the book that felt genuinely arbitrary to me.
Emily: Right because she doesn't really add anything, and when Libbie dies it's just like "Ava didn't care."
Kelli: Right. I mean, I guess it makes us question what the point of this curse even is. These people all worked so hard to create Ava and harness this power and Ava was like "okay I'm going to grow up and be a celeb and not do anything particularly impressive or important." Another plain bad heroine.
Emily: True.
Kelli: Maybe these Seers are just mad that they can't control women. Lol
Emily: I think that’s probably right.
Kelli: But yeah, normally if an ending doesn't work for me I am a little bit harder on something... but this is a 600+ page book and the ending/reveal happens in the last 30 or so pages. To me it felt like one small part of the plot rather than the "purpose" of the book. And I think that comes back to something the narrator says in the first chapter. "This is only one way to tell it, and only one place to end it. And perhaps it hasn't ended yet."
Emily: Yes, I agree. Like I wasn't reading this whole book wondering "HOW DID THIS CURSE START?" So I wasn't really disappointed by the reveal. I was ok with there just being a curse and not even getting why.
Kelli: Right, same.
Emily: Is it time for ratings?
Kelli: Yeah!
Emily: I was teetering between 4 and 5 stars, but I think this book was pretty special, and so I will overlook "flaws" when something feels super special. So 5 stars for me.
Kelli: Yes, agreed. And honestly, even if Goodreads did allow for half stars, I think I'd still bump this up to a five. I really, really enjoyed reading this. In fact, it might even be making a podcast appearance during our 2020 faves convo.
Emily: Oooooh!
Kelli: Winky face.
Emily: Yes make us talk about it on the podcast. THEY CAN’T STOP US!
Kelli: QUEER BOOK CLUB TAKES OVER THE POD!
Emily: Tell us what you picked next!
Kelli: So after saying that I tend to gravitate towards contemporary fiction, I've decided to choose a historical fiction novel for our next book - The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. As you said, we've been on a roll since we started this series, so I'm kind of worried about fucking it up. Pray for me.
Emily: We have to read a bad one at some point. It will come.
Kelli: I know. I just hope it’s yours.
Emily: W O W.
Kelli: I never said I was a good person. I'm a PLAIN BAD HEROINE!!!!!!
Emily: Cheers to YET ANOTHER five-star queer girl book club pick! See you back here mid-January for our next book. IN 2021. YOU HEAR? We’ll have a new president! Or almost have. Depends on how quickly we get the post up. But yay new president!