Review: LOTE by Shola Von Reinhold

LOTE is the dazzling debut novel from Scottish author Shola Von Reinhold, which I came across by chance during lockdown. Initially drawn to the beautiful artwork and a fascinating plot outline, I got much more out of reading LOTE than I could ever have imagined. “Enriching” is an understatement.

Let’s spend a moment on the title: LOTE was a fictional, mystical society from the 1920s that followed the philosophy of the (fictional) Lotus Eaters, featured in Greek mythology, by organizing life around luxury, idleness and pleasure. When I spoke to the author over Skype during confinement, they explained that this is one of many stories used as a cautionary tale to dispel notions of anti-idleness, a concept that is rooted in colonial discourse. The title, therefore, sets up one of the book’s central ideas, namely the radical pursuit of pleasure as a Black person. 

LOTE’s protagonist is Mathilda Adamarola, a Black, queer, working-class woman who is fascinated by the Bright Young Things of 1920s London, a group of Bohemian aristocrats and socialites famous for embracing the wilful idleness and pacifist beliefs of the interwar years. While Mathilda is enamoured with their unabashed campness and decadent lifestyle, she is unable to identify with them because of her Blackness. Until the day that she comes across a photo of the forgotten Black Scottish modernist poet, Hermia Druitt, at a party with Stephen Tennant, a prominent member of the Bright Young Things. This discovery is at once exhilarating and startling for Mathilda as it’s the first time she has seen a photograph of a Black person from the 1920s outside of colonial documentation. 

This pivotal moment leads Mathilda to successfully apply to an artist’s residency on a whim, located in a small European town where Hermia herself lived during the 1930s. In this new environment, Mathilda quickly picks up on the cultish vibes that her (all white) fellow residency members give off: they all prefer minimalism over decadence and visibly turn up their noses at her radical pursuit of pleasure. This disdain for Mathilda’s ornamental style is an expression of colonialist contempt, particularly Africans who were routinely shamed for their colourful adornments such as braids, jewellery and tattoos. But Mathilda chooses to focus on the free accommodation and allocated stipend, which she spends on fancy cocktails and dinners out, and fully commits herself to find out as much about Hermia as she possibly can. Mathilda’s quest becomes more pleasurable once she meets Erskine-Lily, a fellow Black, queer person with a Hermia fascination, who recreates the forgotten poet’s lifestyle through both his appearance and mannerisms.    

Identity is a recurring theme throughout the novel, which I also had the opportunity to discuss with Shola. For example, there is a case of mistaken identity when Hermia is thought to be Josephine Baker while travelling in Europe. Hermia, Mathilda and Erskine-Lily slip in and out of different identities at various points and all three characters are Black, queer artists trying to find their identities in an imperialist society that has suppressed and / or erased Black European culture and voices throughout history. Mathilda self-identifies as an Escapist. She recognizes Erskine-Lily as a fellow Escapist too. Shola confirmed for me that their characters’ need for identity fluidity is linked to escaping interpersonal oppressions from the misogynistic, racist and homophobic structures that are in place. By the end of the novel, no clear answers are provided as to their futures but there is definitely an acceptance of each other’s need to shift identity, which brings with it a certain level of freedom. Although this is not liberation in the true sense of the word but rather a skill to survive, Mathilda and Erskine-Lily acquire more agency in regards to their escapism by having met each other.

I loved the intergenerational relationship between Mathilda and Agnes, an older Black woman with whom she works at the national archive job (unpaid of course). Agnes educates Mathilda about the destruction of Black art by “...active racists who happen to work in galleries and museums.” By the end of the novel, Mathilda and Agnes are working together again with the intention of bringing Hermia and her work to a wider audience. Their relationship actively goes against cultural suppression - something that benefits white supremacy alone by perpetuating the idea of superior and inferior races - and made me think of something that Shola shared during our chat: “Every generation (of Black people) seems to be cut off from the previous one.” This active closure is essentially a roadblock that creates extra work for Black people of a new decade or generation who must spend time researching their Black predecessors instead of having the luxury of creating.

In Hermia’s timeline, she is a contemporary of Virginia Woolf. It’s a powerful detail that forces the reader to confront Woolf’s feminism, which undeniably excluded Black women, despite her cultural interest in Black arts. While rightfully being lauded for writing about controversial topics such as queerness in Orlando or mental health in Mrs. Dalloway, let us not ignore that Woolf herself states in A Room of One’s Own: “It is one of the great advantages of being a woman that one can pass even a very fine negress without wishing to make an Englishwoman of color.”  The two women never meet within the book, not for lack of opportunity but because of Hermia’s fear that she would be rejected by Woolf based on the colour of her skin. Mathilda’s radical pursuit of pleasure in the present day can in part be taken as her correcting the exclusion of Black women from the "woman" that Woolf wrote about in A Room of One’s Own.

It was hard to say goodbye to Mathilda, Lily-Erskine, Hermia and Agnes, and this I attribute to Shola’s phenomenal writing. They have a clear talent for describing emotions, people, places, colours and textures so vividly and I loved their ability to capture life’s more absurd moments (I’m thinking of the Pousse Café Royal cocktail in particular). LOTE has a serious message at its core, a message that will certainly inform my intersectional feminist activism moving forwards, especially as a white, middle-class, straight woman. But LOTE is just as much a joyful celebration of Black culture that gloriously succeeds at reappropriating eccentricity, usually reserved for white members of the aristocracy, through a Black, queer lens. 

LOTE is published as part of Jacaranda’s historical publishing initiative, Twenty in 2020. This is the first time a UK publisher will publish 20 titles by 20 Black British writers in one year. The books include adult fiction, nonfiction and poetry titles. Find the full list here.