Olivia by Dorothy Strachey (1949)

Many years later, a woman reflects on her life at sixteen during a year in a French girls' school.

Book Review: Olivia is too slender a reed to bear the political freight that has been heaped upon it. Called "a lesbian classic" and a "masterpiece of modern homoerotic fiction," it is much simpler, sweeter, and more meaningful than those hastily flung labels. Posed as a memoir, it's not that either. For readers looking for a novel to carry the weight of a pioneering lesbian novel consider Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) or Nightwood (1936) by Djuna Barnes. Dorothy Bussy (née Strachey, 1865-1960), published her only novel when she was 84 under the pseudonym "Olivia." Originally written in French, it followed in theme Colette's Claudine at School (1900) and preceded Thérèse et Isabelle (1954) by Violette Leduc. Connected to the Bloomsbury Group, Strachey dedicated the book to the memory of Virginia Woolf. The plot follows the academic rivalries of a girls' school, in which Olivia ardently chooses sides, concluding with a dramatic incident. The amours in Olivia are tame, chaste, and free of overt acts of pedophilia. In the passionate haze that envelops the novel there is little to tell whether this is a school-girl crush, an infatuation, or a first love. But Strachey expertly captures teenage fevers and the claustrophobic incubation of boarding school. Olivia is undeniably emotive, obsessive, fervent, expressive and a vital read.  [4★]