A lot of mainstream lesbian narratives are afraid to lean into messiness of relationships. The suffering in so much Queer media comes from similar inciting conflicts: a character having to shield an identity from the public or tackle day-to-day homophobia, only to be relieved by Queer community, in the form of a Queer friend or an internet subgroup. But Kim Narby’s debut novel “Saturn Returning” — the first release from new publishing imprint Sapph-Lit — has the nerve to stand face to face with chaotic reality, one where Queer women knowingly agonize each other, rather than deriving their pain solely from homonormative culture.
“Saturn Returning” follows three Queer best friends — Trace, Silvia and Jordan — over a decade, from meeting in their college years to their big city life-post grad. Trace and Silvia are engaged, until Trace calls Jordan one day and professes her love for her — a true love triangle.
The book is structured with multiple timelines and perspective switches between the friends, so readers get all angles on this decade of friendship. Because their lives are so intertwined, these changes in perspective and even extreme time jumps never feel jarring. In a book as character-heavy as this one, this choice highlights the gravity of each spiraling argument, and none of the emotion in the book ever feels unrealistic or misplaced.
Arguments are central to the plot of the novel, as expected in any love triangle. All of these intense moments felt fully realized and realistic. Even at their most dramatic, none of the conversations felt absurd. Everything was delivered with the correct level of emotion, evidently pulling from lived experience.
This commitment to chaos was also present beyond the central love triangle, in each character’s family lives and career goals. Each of them come from not-so-perfect backgrounds, dealing with varying levels of trauma over the decade. They all also find themselves conflicted about their career paths and various cities, not wanting to admit to each other or themselves their unhappiness. All of this added uncertainty paints a good picture of what it is to be a young adult, and because we’ve watched each character come of age, these moments feel even more substantial.
The three main characters took a while to differentiate from each other, perhaps because they felt too similar at times. But this is the lived experience of the way-too-close homoerotic friendship, creating one somewhat indecipherable amalgamation out of many people. Whether or not this feeling was intentional, that blurred sense of self comes through — justifying moments when you momentarily forget which perspective you’re reading or whose family background is whose. It’s tricky, but makes sense.
At every turn, Narby commits to realism, never forfeiting the truth of real, messy Queer experiences. As the trio swallows one another, wielding forever-stinging comments, making decisions you want to look away from, an underrepresented facet of Queer experience comes to the surface. And with its commitment to doing so, “Saturn Returning” refuses to shield itself from actuality, a refreshing and necessary read in the current literary landscape.
Daily Arts Writer Campbell Johns can be reached at caajohns@umich.edu.
