Tag Archives: University

Loveless

Alice Oseman

I recently read Loveless by Alice Oseman in order to review it for The Publishing Post, a fortnightly magazine I work on as a contributing writer, and I had a surprising amount of thoughts on the book and so decided to write a more lengthy review of it here.

Loveless is a YA novel told from the perspective of Georgia, a quiet 18 year old who is starting university having never been kissed. This book brilliantly captures what it means to be a nervous fresher who feels completely out of their depth. While on the surface this may sound like a fairly predictable teenage narrative (of which there are hundreds), this particular story explores topics surrrounding asexuality and aromanticism in a rarely seen instance of representation.

The novel intelligently explores what it is to grow up surrounded by other people experiencing romantic feelings and relationships and wonder hwy you aren’t experiencing the same things. However, perhaps the best part is how Georgia frequently doesn’t even realise the things she isn’t feeling. She understands so many romatic and sexual feelings as unrealistic and only happening in books of films that she doesn’t even realise she’s different.

I have to mention one chapter in particualr, entitled Ellis. When Georgia returns home for Christmas after her first term at university her whole family are staying for the holiday. While I won’t give away completely what happens, Georgia ends up having an extended conversation with her older cousin, Ellis, about sexuality. Ellis is in her thirties and so the reader is given an inter-generational conversation between two age groups where this is rarely seen. It is rarely discussed how different the world has been for the current generation of teenagers compared to the millenials who are now in their thirties and so it’s easy to forget that the two can have very different experiences and understandings of sexuality and gender.

Admittedly, I found the language slightly simplistic at times, but recognise that I am not the intended audience for the book and I know that when I was I would have devoured it because the representation is fantastic. Although revisiting YA did make me feel slightly older than I would like for only being 21, it was deeply refreshing to see how societal perceptions of what it means to be LGBTQ+ have evolved and how this has translated into the YA fiction that I was desperately looking for when I was a queer teenager.

Entering Publishing: Step 1

The Art of Doing Nothing

I thought I’d make this post to kick off documenting my journey into publishing, even though it hasn’t exactly started yet. I am currently half way through my final year at university, hoping to graduate in July 2020 (fingers crossed) and very on edge about having no concrete plans in place beyond that.

That’s not to say I don’t know what I want to be doing come July, I just currently have no significant way of getting there. Once I graduate I am hoping to be starting either an entry-level job or some form of internship within or related to the book publishing industry, but this is easier said than done.

Not only is this a very competitive industry to get into, but it also means that because I can’t start working until June 2020, I can’t start applying for jobs before April 2020 and this is proving incredibly frustrating. While everyone around me is applying for grad schemes or masters programmes, I feel very much like I am sitting on my hands, playing the waiting game and trying not to check for available jobs that I cannot start applying for yet.

I have always been someone who likes to plan and prepare to the nth degree and I am definitely struggling with the art of doing nothing but waiting. However, in the mean time I am still trying to do what I can, even if it’s not a lot. I have started this blog, which has not only proven to be a great motivator to find more time to read but I am also really enjoying doing, signed up to edit for my university’s newspaper, I researched various different internships I can eventually apply for, created a LinkedIn to keep up to date with job opportunities and started following the twitter accounts of different publishing houses and literary agents to get all their news, both with regard to career options and general changes within the industry.

While this may sound like a fair bit to be getting on with, it unfortunately hasn’t satisfied my need to know what I’ll be doing in 6 months time, other than potentially having to move back home for a bit. So for now I can do nothing but wait, and hope that when I can apply the wait will pay off and getting in my applications early will increase my odds.