Jacaranda Books recently won UK Regional Small Press of the Year, and if all their output is of the very high standard of quality to be found in this wonderful novel, they very much deserved to win.

Shola von Reinhold’s debut is a joy, a gem of a novel, as lustrous and multi-hued as the image that adorns the cover, representing the so-called peacock stage of alchemy when the oily black contents of the alembic flare iridescent. (An image taken from the illuminated manuscript Splendor Solis 1532-1535). This is an impressively accomplished first novel, and marks the author out as one to follow. One of twenty black writers Jacaranda will publish this year (#Twentyin2020), the story touches on many of the reasons – historical and contemporary – why such a move by a publisher is necessary.

From the very first page, the central narrator/protagonist, Mathilda Adamorola’s difference is foregrounded, her appearance as a flamboyantly attired black, working-class queer bars her entry, even from places she has permission to enter, marked as a Maniacal Black Person in her eBay lab diamonds, silver leatherette and lead velvets. A devotee of the Luxuries, she’s fascinated by the Bright Young Things of the ‘20s and embodies as much as possible the principle of extravagance in dress, demeanor and manner. In her avid pursuit of information regarding one of her Transfixions, a lesser known black Modernist poet, Hermia Druitt, she finds herself on an artists’ residency in the sleepy town of Dun, participating in a prolonged engagement with the work of the art theorist called Garreaux, whose principals of unadorned minimalism couldn’t be further from Mathilda’s interest in opulence and excessive decoration.

These opposing aesthetics are one of the novel’s themes, along with the erasure of black art and artists. She is excluded yet determined and the characters she meets along the way, some willing to help, others to hinder, are brilliantly drawn and memorable.

Yes, it’s a novel of ideas but it doesn’t let those ideas dominate. Instead, in prose that glistens, it offers characters and situations that embody those ideas, as Mathilda’s research into Druitt’s life and work take her through a plethora of texts, sources and places. Mathilda tracks down an academic work entitled Black Modernisms, pages from which are included here, along with diary entries and letters pertaining to Druitt’s life and poetry. This polyvocal approach provides a richly coloured tapestry that’s exciting to read. The novel’s title is the name of a clandestine cult devoted to epicurean pleasure-seeking (the Lotus Eaters) of which Druitt was a member, the alchemical practices of which Mathilda and her equally Druitt-obsessed sidekick, the fabulously named Erskine-Lily, duplicate.

The theme of how black contributions to culture are erased is playfully yet powerfully explored as the book weaves a potent queer magic that keeps the reader entranced. Shola von Reinhold is a fresh and refreshing new queer voice that you should definitely check out.

Shola von Reinhold is a Scottish-Nigerian writer and recent graduate of the MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow which they completed through the Jessica York Writing Scholarship. Shola was Cove Park’s 2018 Scottish Emerging Writer and a Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize 2019 runner-up. Shola writes widely around race, modernism, ornament, gender, labour-evasion and Queer Black extra-aesthetics; and has been published in or on i-D, AnOther Magazine, The Independent and The Cambridge Literary Review. LOTE is Shola’s debut novel.

Published by  https://www.jacarandabooksartmusic.co.uk

Review by Jonathan Kemp

Queerguru London Contributing Editor Jonathan Kemp writes fiction and non-fiction and teaches creative writing at Middlesex University. He is the author of two novels – London Triptych (2010), which won the 2011 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and Ghosting (2015) – and the short-story collection Twentysix. (2011, all published by Myriad Editions). Non-fiction works include The Penetrated Male (2012) and Homotopia?: Gay Identity, Sameness and the Politics of Desire (2015, both Punctum Books).