Learned By Heart by Emma Donoghue

Learned By Heart is a historical novel about Eliza Raine and her relationship with Anne Lister whilst they were both at school in York. As the daughter of a British father and Indian mother, Eliza stands out, boarding alone at school whilst her older sister is a day pupil. Her solitude is broken when a new student, Anne Lister, arrives at the school, throwing usual convention and routine out the window.

It isn’t surprising given the modern resurgence in interest in Anne Lister that Emma Donoghue has gone for writing a novel about some of her life, but it is interesting that the book takes a very different approach to the TV series Gentleman Jack by focusing not on Lister as the central character, but on Eliza. The book is from Eliza’s point of view as a schoolgirl, but is intercut with letters she is writing in adulthood, which is a nice way of bringing both the youthful love story and the reality of what happened to her later on without just making the narrative do a huge time jump. As I’ve already read a couple of books about Anne Lister, the plot was as expected, more about their deepening relationship than much actually happening, and the ending is quite quick, but the letter at the end rounds off the story. If it wasn’t based on a true story, there probably would’ve been more drama in the narrative, but most of the drama in this book comes from the gaps in the story afterwards, as told in part by the letters.

It is packed with detail and from Donoghue’s afterword, you can see the amount of research that went into it (as someone who lives in York and sometimes goes to King’s Manor for work, I did appreciate that it felt very accurate). I’m not a huge fan of historical fiction, but I appreciated that you didn’t feel like all the historical detail was piled on, and the afterword shows what was used in the narrative and where Donoghue focused on telling a story. The book is an exercise in imagining someone’s life who has far less documented detail than someone like Anne Lister, who wrote so much down and has therefore been written about and fictionalised a fair amount.

If you’re already interested in Anne Lister, this book is likely to be a fresh take on telling part of her story through the lens of another person. It is mostly a story about young love between outsiders, but also gives a glimpse into some of the whirlwind left behind Anne Lister. I found it well crafted, but as I’m not a huge historical fiction fan and I already knew what was going to happen, it didn’t quite grip me as it might others.