The Club – Is there a Solution for Every Problem? I’ve read a few books recently that are playing on my mind. Leading that list is A L Brooks’ The Club. The club of the title is established in present day Manchester by Mandy, a middle aged woman who wants to ensure that women who want an encounter with no strings attached have somewhere just for them, rather than the dangerous and demeaning conditions she experienced as a young woman. The ways in which her own experiences have shaped the present-day club are illustrated through the device of alternating chapters. Every second chapter is set in and around the present-day club. Each preceding chapter takes us back to a period in Mandy’s life that influences what the club is today. There are many lesbian novels that have drawn on the setting of encounter venues, and at first I thought I was reading a rather old-fashioned novel of this genre, not unlike a Radclyffian erotica setting with butches, femmes and vivid descriptions of anonymous sex in dark cellars. If you wanted to, I think you could possibly read the novel through this lens and enjoy it in that vein. Brooks is a very talented writer, and there are no lapses, errors or tentative approaches to give you any hint this is a debut novel. However, while you can read the novel as “anonymous encounter erotica”, I don’t think that is what The Club – the novel – or the club – the venue, is really about. Rather, this is a novel that provides us with the club as a stage on which a series of scenarios, many of them interconnected, are played out. Mandy, the owner, is an excellent stage manager. There are rules, safe spaces, locker rooms and showers. The club serves as a vehicle to explore really challenging and persistent issues for lesbian women, in their relationships with others and in their acceptance of themselves. This novel reminds me very much of two others, both by established writers, who present interlinked stories of women facing challenging relationships, life transitions and in some cases, really wicked problems. Karin Kallmaker’s “18th and Castro” and Georgia Beers’ “Slices of Life” both came to mind. What is interesting in The Club is that for each of the women / couples who face challenges, they are resolved through the dynamics of the club – except for one woman. After an encounter, she initially feels relief, even joy – but it is almost immediately replaced by despair. What is she going to do now? At first I was disappointed but then I was impressed – Brooks does not push to present a solution for every problem. Sometimes, it is only possible to make clear the nature and extent of the dilemma. I enjoyed this book very much. You may laugh at the one element that detracted from the story for me. There is little to no consideration of safe sex. While that may seem a strange objection, and my just show that I really got sucked into the story line, for me it jarred with the overall emphasis in the novel on the club providing a ‘safe space’. Why be distracted by the concern of long-term implications of unsafe one-off encounters? I enjoyed this book very much and as I said at the start, it continues to play on my mind. For engaging, emotive and thoughtful fiction, The Club is on my ‘highly recommended’ list.
