Product Description

An unusual, lyrical love story - beautifully written and thoroughly compelling. Haunted by an unspoken passion, a narrator decides to write some pages, pages comprising the story of the beginning, the blossoming, and finally the ending of a young woman's most intense love affair. 'Each day a page, to show you that I am finding a story, the story of how we might have been together, once. Of how we could be.' An unformed, innocent student in her first semester at university, Flannery Jansen initially encounters her lover in a local diner. But her tentative overtures - a look, a blush - are dismissed and Flannery retreats, humiliated. Future chance meetings on campus discourage Flannery even more, for Anne Arden is sophisticated and poised; in Flannery's eyes almost impossibly beautiful. Until she realises that Anne feels the same way about her.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5808 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Sylvia Brownrigg's Pages for You is the story of a sentimental, sensual education, a love affair between a student and a teacher--all blushes, kisses, books and poetry. Flannery is just 17 and a first-year student at an American university; Anne, a lecturer, is 28: "wise, well-travelled, sophisticated". Flannery sees this red-haired, red-lipped goddess drinking coffee in a diner, wearing "pointed, pretty, argumentative boots", and is immediately smitten. Her dreams begin to taunt her with a "bawdy vividness", and much to her surprise the dreams become a reality, when Anne returns her affections. The story is beautifully paced, in small, concise chapters, each capturing a moment in an intense emotional experience. The prose is lyrical and a little gauche, mirroring Flannery's youth and her enthusiasm for literature--she is a poet in the making, and her heartfelt narration of her own story reflects that. If Desdemona loved Othello partly for his stories, than Flannery loves Anne partly for the content of her bookshelves. The novel is lush with sensation and impression; a recognition of the physical passion that the two women share:

If doubt had smouldered in Anne at first, the sex extinguished it ... Her questions were silenced by their pleasure calls, and the smoothness and the fluidity of their limbs together calmed her.

The novel is intimate and romantic, vivid as the "passionate hot fall of the autumn leaves with their brilliant reds, yellows and golds". --Eithne Farry

Review
'Like Turgenev or Katherine Mansfield, Sylvia Brownrigg understands that the inexperienced lover is a detective who doesn't know which clues matter... mesmerising' Helen Dunmore, The Times 'Exuberant and wistful' Times Literary Supplement 'A candid, fresh and vivid novel' The Sunday Telegraph

About the Author
Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of the acclaimed novel The Metaphysical Touch, and of a book of short stories, Ten Women who Shook the World. She is a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and lives in North London.

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Customer Reviews

"I'd like to borrow from you those miles you've seen..."
Pages for You was an impulse buy at 5.30 in the morning, with the prospect of a three-hour train journey and nothing to read looming on the horizon. Eleven months later, it's been thumbed through more times than I care to count and has whole passages committed to memory.

It is the story of two people who fell in love. The fact that they are both women is, beyond a couple of passing references to the outside world, incidental. It can be identified with by anyone who has ever experienced unrequited love, anyone who has ever been in love, anyone who has ever tasted betrayal, and anyone who has even just dreamed. The narrative is written in the third-person, but reading the prologue and between the lines, the narrator is an older, wiser, and more cynical Flannery, telling a story woven around her poem, "Pages for You", from which the novel takes its name. With enviable ease, it demonstrates sensuality and eroticism without becoming cheap and graphic.

Sylvia Brownrigg transcends international borders, outside experiences, and sexualities, resulting in a commentary relevant to every person in the universe on the crazy things we're willing to do for love.

Beautiful
An amazing book for anyone who has ever been young and in love, this is the story of a student who becomes obsessed by - and later has a relationship with - her teacher. Rather than being an exposé of lesbianism it is primarily a very traditional love story exploring the nature of relationships. The prose is gorgeous, poetic stuff - occasionally veers into the over-flowery but always pulls back in time.

So Enjoyable
Before I read this, I was sure that I'd never find an enjoyable lesbian related book anywhere. But I was proved very wrong.

Pages For You is an incredible journey into a relationship. The author uses beautiful details to describe her characters, makign us immediatly aware of shy but savvy Flannery, and confident, beauitful Anne. From the first page we get an immpression fo their relationship, and details from the begining get carried through the book, to create a feeling of wholeness.

This is one story, Brownrigg always shows us. Just one story in the lives of two intriguing, wonderful women, Flannery and Anne. While Flannery gets the main focus of the novel, it is Anne who carries the story, with her whily ways and her beautifully crafted character. Flannery and Anne are so different,a dn so perfectly layered. You can see exactly ow their relationship works, and exactly how it flows.

Brownrigg's writign style is amazing. She carries you straight into the character's heads and uses wonderful descriptions and ideas to give the book a landscape quality - I mean, it feels like you're really there.

But, aside from how well its written, what I loved most about this book is, it doesn't preach. Flannery and Anne are just gay, or bi, or whatever. Very little is mentioned about the fact that they are both girls. It msotly just tells the story of their relationship. It makes lesbianism seem absolutely natural, something which preachy teen novels never manage to do. Flannery and Anne. They're just a couple. maybe they're in love. That's the point of this book.

I love this story and can't praise it highly enough.