‘Sweetener’ overview: Marissa Higgins’ novel is a enjoyable sapphic romp

In 1984, at age 33, I fell in love with a lady for the primary time. Her identify was Cathy. Her earlier girlfriend’s identify was additionally Cathy. “Wasn’t that complicated, sharing a reputation together with your girlfriend?” I requested. She shrugged. “All the things about being a lesbian is complicated at first,” she stated. “You get used to it.”

In “Sweetener,” Marissa Higgins’ attractive, poignant second sapphic novel, the reader is served loads of confusion, lesbian-related and in any other case. For starters, two of the ebook’s three protagonists, who’re breaking apart as we meet them, are each named Rebecca. With 18,993 ladies’ names in lively use in modern America, why would Higgins construct this disconcerting factor into “Sweetener’s” construction? It proves to be a choice well-made. Because the reader turns the pages, studying to individuate the 2 Rebeccas (whose central battle is studying to individuate from one another) offers us bonus details about, and empathy for, each of them.

“My spouse and I’ve the identical first identify, although our buddies by no means used mine; I’ve at all times been Rebecca’s spouse,” Rebecca No. 1 says of Rebecca No. 2 — No. 2 being the extra highly effective one, since she’s the one initiating the breakup. “Our final names, too, are nonetheless the identical, as I took hers at our courtroom marriage ceremony,” No. 1 tells us. “With the identical identify, it’s straightforward to turn out to be one individual as a substitute of two.”

Making use of for a part-time cashier job close to her dismal D.C. condo, Rebecca No. 1 mulls, “Contained in the market, I remind myself I’m an individual. I’ve an age, a birthday, an deal with.” When the shop supervisor asks about Rebecca’s hobbies, she thinks, “Making hire? Getting myself off? Discovering a lady with more cash than both of us to take me to the dentist?”

The partaking, authentic plot of “Sweetener” is complicated, too. Unbeknownst to Rebecca No. 1, she and No. 2 (PhD pupil, much less depressed, extra conniving, heavy drinker) are each courting Charlotte. Obsessive about having a child, Charlotte wears a pretend being pregnant stomach, a reality identified solely to Rebecca No. 2, as a result of Charlotte retains her shirt on whereas having intercourse with Rebecca No. 1. (Having Charlotte considering, “Please don’t discover please don’t discover please don’t discover” to cowl Rebecca No. 1’s failure to note that her sexual associate is carrying an enormous baby-shaped silicone belt appears a little bit of an, um, stretch.) Each Rebeccas have nice intercourse with Charlotte. Neither Rebecca needs to cease.

Rebecca No. 2 additionally needs a child and doesn’t need to cease consuming, which implies not bearing however as a substitute fostering a toddler, which implies enlisting Rebecca No. 1 within the effort, because the two are nonetheless legally married, and fostering as a single divorcee requires a minimal one-year authorized separation. Neither Rebecca is for certain whether or not pretending to be married will consequence of their precise reconciliation. Solely Rebecca No. 1 is for certain that she needs that.

“I do know it’s not honest of me to ask something of you,” Rebecca No. 2 admits in a cellphone name to her soon-to-be ex-wife, “however I’m severe about desirous to have a household.”

Determined as she is for a reconciliation, Rebecca No. 1 mulls, “When she says she needs me to consider how necessary a household is to her, and what this might imply for her, I perceive she is just not utilizing the phrase we… I inform her I miss her and he or she says she misses me, too. Then she says, ‘So that you’ll come by when the social employee is right here?’”

In 1984, after I dated Cathy No. 2, just like the Rebeccas, a lot of the lesbians I knew have been younger, poverty-stricken and uncomfortably enmeshed with their lovers, they usually thought of “lesbian” to be their main id. In contrast to the Rebeccas, we have been additionally terrified by the implications of being out throughout what have been extraordinarily harmful instances. Through the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, Cathy and I have been chased down metropolis streets by males shouting slurs at us. We have been refused rooms in lodges. Cathy would have been fired from her childcare job if she’d come out at work. My custody of my youngsters was threatened. I used to be banished from my father’s dwelling.

“My spouse and I am going to our firstclass on youngster improvement collectively,” Rebecca No. 1 tells us. “Subsequent to my spouse, I really feel cool.” A number of pages later, she observes: “The social employee tells me I’m fortunate to have a associate who values non-threatening communication.” Throughout their dwelling go to with a second D.C. social employee, the Rebeccas lie about a number of issues — mainly, their marital and monetary instability. However they don’t lie about what Cathy and I might have needed to conceal if we’d tried to undertake a toddler within the Nineteen Eighties. Dwelling in a giant, liberal metropolis, the Rebeccas don’t really feel the necessity (nonetheless required for security in “pink” locales) to name one another roommates or buddies. They name one another wives, as a result of in 2025 same-sex marriage and parenting are givens, not distant fantasies.

Ten years after it turned “cool” (and authorized, and publicly acknowledged) for a girl to have a spouse; 40 years after I and lots of, many others paid a horrible worth for popping out in our households, workplaces and neighborhoods, lesbians like Marissa Higgins are creating lesbian characters who reside in a sweeter, changed-for-the-better world. The sugar that made life safer for us is the queer activism that begins with telling true tales of queer lives and persists at present with renewed want and renewed vigor. “Sweetener,” the novel, is a enjoyable romp by way of one model of lesbo-land circa 2025. Higgins’ “Sweetener” celebrates and accelerates the lengthy, tough trip to lasting queer equality.

Maran, writer of “The New Outdated Me” and different books, lives in a Silver Lake bungalow that’s even older than she is.