Life Mask - Emma Donoghue

Synopsis :
Set in London during the late eighteenth century and with the French Revolution as its bloody and passionate backdrop, Life Mask tells the tale of three women caught in a kind of love triangle.
Donoghue’s fourth novel is formed around a fictional recreation of the relationships between a group of real-life historical figures. Eliza Farren is a Drury Lane actress whose virtue is her most prized possession. Her long-running relationship with the twelfth Earl of Derby has never progressed beyond conversation and the occasional hand-touching as it is always played out under the watchful eye of her mother. Derby is a married man, although estranged from his wife, and this chaperoning is a situation devised (as much by Eliza as by her mother) to keep Eliza’s reputation intact. Anne Damer is a successful sculptor who meets and befriends Eliza. She is unable, or unwilling, to acknowledge that she has lesbian feelings towards Eliza, despite the obvious warning signals, and here the story takes off.


My Thoughts :
It is bit boring at the initial stage of this book. Not much of excitement until at the later part whereby the rumors of Mrs Damer's situation has caused the friendship or perhaps relationship between her and the rising actress of Miss Eliza Farren to drifted apart. I was not familiar with the word "sapphist" until I googled it up.
Pretty intriguing plot towards the end.