There are few books, especially works of fiction, I read where I desire to annotate little notes or underline sentences because of how deeply they resonate with me. I can only think of five books where I have done so, and they are my five most favourite and beloved novels.
I have now read another I would add to that list.
Evie Dunmore’s The Gentleman’s Gambit possessed every bit of charm and passion as her other books in her League of Extraordinary Women series. However, this book felt even more personal for me than the others (though, I believe I have shared in my other reviews how easily I superimposed myself onto the heroine, which might be more a testament of Dunmore’s skill in fleshing out characters than any accurate self-reflection on my part).
As you know, earlier this year I received a diagnosis which both changed everything forever for me, but also opened up the world to new possibilities. I am, of course, referring to the discovery I am autistic, much like our heroine in this final installment of the Extraordinary Women.
In this fourth book, Catriona is a “gifted” linguist, but has unusual habits which mark her as an oddity amongst her peers, even beyond her academic pursuits. It was quite easy for me to notice her differences were more than personality. They were down right physiological because she was neurodivergent!
Her sensitivities to noise, to crowds and other people, to needing time alone to muse and find inspiration—these are all traits I share with her, traits which I always thought or was told I needed to rid myself of before learning they are inherent to my being.
Though I often find myself drawn to formidable heroines, especially feminist trailblazers in a field of science or the like, none of the ones I have read in modern fiction were written as neurodivergent. They were different from the usual damsel in distress, sure, but not really different enough I truly saw myself in them.
Not until Catriona.
I daresay I would consider her amongst peers and equals like Jo March and Jane Eyre; at least for me and how deeply I connected with her.
Reading a neurodivergent heroine was so much more poignant for me. Her struggles were my struggles. Quite literally. The manipulation from others, being taken advantage of for our intelligence, misreading social cues especially in the realm of romance, the sensory overwhelms which can too easily ignite a distressed reaction in us, the desire to pursue our likes and interests but maybe at the expense of domestic duty and societal expectations—I could go on and on and on, I’m sure.
I want to have my own copy, not the library’s, so I can reread this beautiful love story and highlight the passages which gripped me the most. I cried multiple times, too, because of how cathartic it was.
As an autistic person, as someone who will probably have autistic children, I cannot begin to describe how important it is to find and read characters like myself. I hope as the industry begins to support and purchase more stories like Catriona’s, one day there will be a superfluous amount of books for my future daughter to read and see herself in, to know she’s not alone, and she too can find her own happy ending with the man of her dreams.
Her story at trying and failing to find love felt too much like my own, and in a way, though she knew she was different, she didn’t understand why, and so ensconced herself off from the rest of the world and hid due to the discrimination she suffered, even at times from her own father. That is, until Mr. Khoury appeared in her life, quite unexpectedly.
This surprise encounter quite literally forced her to bare herself to him in a vulnerability she never shared with another person, and from there their romance ensues.
What I appreciated most about Elias Khoury is that he sees her differences and adores her for them, telling her they are a gift. My own husband has said as much to me at times, even before we knew it was autism which was/is the source of these differences.
Speaking of Mr. Khoury, I would be remiss to not share how deftly Dunmore approached his exotic self.
Elias Khoury is a mysterious man from the Levant, seeking to return stolen artefacts to his homeland. It is how their paths cross, Elias and Catriona’s, as it is her father whom Elias seeks to aid him in restoring these items to their proper home. As such, much about the Levant is discussed throughout this story.
Dunmore tenderly paints the backdrop of a restless nation whose fate has been decided for millennia by imperialistic nations seeking to expand their own boarders, and in so doing, reshape the boarders of Elias’s homeland in a way which harms the equilibrium of his people.
Of course, I am referring to the Règlement Organique, where European Powers “intervened” in a conflict between the Maronite and Druze Lebanese, resulting in the creation of autonomous Mount Lebanon to protect and provide a place for the Maronite Christians who had been massacred by the Druze and supporting Ottoman Empire.
Though I am by no means and expert, I am a little more aware of the ethnopolitical dynamics at play within the Levant, especially in Israel, and just how “helpful” these “interventions” were. Much of the unrest we have today within the Levant and Arabia and the Middle East at large is due to these new borders, which ignores the tensions and strife, most times bloodshed, of the past, which is why their silly interventions happened in the first place, despite not honouring them, but I digress.
The delicacy in her approach with these tragedies, how it affected the people like Elias, and her care for his culture, his sense of patriotism, of justice for his people—it was comforting to read, especially when there is so much unrest in our homeland today.
This book was so inspiring, and I am so grateful to Dunmore for taking the plunge and making these character many would shy away from, especially when we deserve to be seen the same as anyone else. We are different, not less, as Temple Grandin would say.
What is even more impressive about Dunmore’s writing is that none of this has to do with her meticulous eloquence, how she weaves these tiny threads of details into one exquisite tapestry, satiating all your deepest desires for the characters. She held on until almost the last page in this book, specifically, before our characters were truly reunited together, before giving us that blissful, hard won, and well-deserved happily ever after.
Not only does she give us an epilogue of sorts for each heroine who proceeded Catriona from her other three books, but she masterfully weaves all their lives back together for their unified purpose of the suffragette movement, to win the vote for women in Victorian Britain. She never loses sight of the greater purpose all the women have been striving towards throughout their individual romances. By giving them a purpose bigger than themselves, her story and characters are imbued with a vitality, a vivacity, which is more compelling as a reader.
I honestly don’t know how she does it. She is one of the greatest authors I’ve read, and I hope so many enjoy her books, this series, as I have. Just because it is romance does not mean it lacks the substance so many equate with this genre, discrediting these stories as superficial nonsense. (Even then, a good romance is nothing superficial when so many in the “real world” look for it every day, women and men alike.)
So go out and get yourself a copy today! You won’t regret it!
What’s on my Shelf: August
Growing Confidence
Only Silence
WOMS: The Familiar
