Should you answer the call to research, you may find yourself becoming a version of the novel’s protagonist, Mathilda Adaramola, whose name the reader learns on the book’s second page when an “incensed blond twink” tries to stop her from entering the London archive she is volunteering in. LOTE is rich, in the non-sarcastic sense: Layered and ornate, the text is a luxury to re-read, tie-ing in, as it does, and so leading out, if you’re curious, into a vast world of research and observation, complementing specialized histories with contemporary realities dressed in clever analogies. Some of them-Josephine Baker, Virginia Woolf-may be recognizable, others-Ardizzoni, Sarah Montmorency, Luisa Casati, John Garreaux-may be less so, because they are fictional or niche-historic. Shola von Reinhold’s debut novel LOTE is decorated with names as iconic as the author’s own.
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