Emma Donoghue writes beautifully, of that there can be no doubt. Learned By Heart is a tale of illicit love, but although well written it's not wonderfully set up. We spend three-quarters of the book following the two girls at their boarding school, Malory Towers style. Whilst the writing style is more mature than Enid Blyton's, the same amount of "not very much" happens - just in a more diverting manner.

"Learned By Heart" by Emma Donoghue is a touching and beautifully written historical love story that unfolds at a 19th-century boarding school. The novel captures the deep connection between two remarkable girls, Eliza and Anne, as they navigate societal norms and their budding romance. Their love story is both poignant and enduring.

I’m a big Emma Donoghue fan and I liked this historical novel but I don’t think it’s one of her best.
It’s the story of Eliza Raine and her relationship with Anne Lister in a nineteenth century boarding school.
The novel is well-observed but somehow the characters never gripped me or made me really feel for them.
The story is an interesting one, though, of inter-racial love between women of the time.
I’d recommend it as an interesting east read, an important history left to be told, but I have enjoyed Donoghue novels more than this one.

As are many people, I am a big Emma Donoghue fan and was greatly excited at the release of this novel. I was curious about Anne Lister's early life and also was very interested in learning more about Eliza Raine, her background, relationship with Anne and how she declined in adult life. However, I'm afraid this book was just fine. The world-building in the school was well-developed and immersive, but the plot was slow and it fell short of connecting to my emotions. It felt like there was so much opportunity to pull in the difficulties Eliza went through and what led to her tragic adult life, but this never pulled me in very deeply. Anne's tendency to speak very pragmatically about issues close to her peers' hearts was as close as we got to examine Raine's heartbreak and occasional inner narratives from herself, but I was left wanting more. I wanted a deep dive into the lives of these girls and it ended so abruptly I was left disappointed.
This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

"Learned by Heart" is the story if the friendship and relationship between Anne Lister (Gentleman Jack) and Eliza Raine. Although I found the book to be beautifully written . I stuggled my way through it as I found the plot very slow. I did manage to finish it and enjoyed it but t did drag just a bit for me.

This novel was a real treat. Beautifully written, it explores the real-life relationship between Anne Lister and Eliza Raine. It is set in Regency England, mostly at the girls' boarding school in York where they first get to know each other. Although much of their story is reimagined, it is evidently very well-researched and the characters (especially Anne Lister’s) really come to life. Though primarily a love story, the presence of greater societal and existential themes make it a profound read.

A beautifully written and atmospheric book, but not my favourite of Emma Donoghue's. It's a fascinating story snd not one I knew much about (I vaguely knew the name Anne Lister, but that was it.) but I found it a bit subdued overall. Psychologically interesting and thoughtful characters but it fell a bit flat to me.

A masterpiece of historical fiction that recounts the schoolgirl relationship between Anne Lister and Eliza Raine. I’d never heard of Anne Lister before starting this book but I’m now keen to learn more. The book is beguiling in its romance, yet heartbreaking in the way that it breaks up the depiction of schoolgirl romance with letters from the adult Eliza, now incarcerated in an asylum, to Anne.

Exceedingly well written. The author’s passion on the subject of Anne and her life is clear throughout.

Firstly thank you to the publishers for allowing me the opportunity to read this novel, unfortunately the formatting on kindle made it somewhat difficult to follow the story. However I managed to read enough to know that it is a book I’m likely to enjoy and will definitely be purchasing my own copy to devour. .

Ashamed to say that I didn’t know about Anne Lister until watching Gentleman Jack but since then I’ve loved learning more about her life so Learned by Heart seemed like the one!

Learned by Heart is a fictional recounting of Lister’s time at boarding school and her romance with Eliza Raine. Eliza and Anne, both outcasts in their own ways forge an intimate friendship that slowly blossoms into more. The backdrop to this are their dreary schooldays and the Yorkshire countryside.

Gosh the potential this had! Emma Donoghue clearly has meticulously researched and crafted this novel. Her writing is so lush and transporting that I felt like I was in York. I also was so intrigued by the portrayal of a young Anne Lister which seemed like it would be a really fresh take. My main gripe with this book is the focus on Raine and Lister’s relationship is minimal at best. The book is overly concerned with the minutiae of boarding school life. There was only so many times I could read about the bland meals and lessons. I wanted more! More romance, more fire! Emma Donoghue is still an impeccable historical fiction writer but this just didn’t do it for me sadly.

Thank you so much to @netgalley for letting me read this!

A fictional account of the love between Anne Lister and her first love Eliza Raine, based on meticulous research. The novel is split between an English girls’ school in1805 and an insane asylum in 1815 and is inspired by the 5-million-word diary that Anne Lister kept throughout her life, written in code and only relatively recently deciphered. Much has already been written about Lister but here Donoghue chooses to delve into the mind of Eliza Raine. The girls first meet at the Manor School for Girls in York and are instantly attracted to each other. Both are social misfits, but bond straight away and their relationship soon becomes passionate and sexual. The novel is structured as a third-person love story, but interspersed with letters written by Raine a decade later. I very much enjoyed the book, but somehow the characters seemed flat compared to those in other books by Donoghue – and this reader at least felt kept at a distance. I never fully engaged with the girls/women, which was strange considering their tortured and difficult relationship so antipathetic to the societal expectations of their era. Nevertheless I found it an intriguing and largely convincing re-imagining of their relationship and a vivid and atmospheric evocation of their lives and times.

Emma Donoghue's 'Learned By Heart' ripped my heart out (but in the best way). Donoghue's mastery of words illuminates a fascinating, yet little known chapter in the life of the famous Yorkshire diarist, landowner and lesbian - Anne Lister. Through the eyes of Lister's first love, fellow school friend Eliza Raine, an orphan of Indian heritage, we are drawn into the world of an 18th Century school, and all the complexities and absurdities, friendships and rivalries that exist there, I was absolutely hooked from the first line. As Eliza's relationship with the unique, headstrong, androgynous Lister deepens, so too do the risks they are both willing to take.

‘In the privacy of my skull, I remember every minute. How I caught love like a cold, at fourteen; or you did, and passed it to me; how it flared up between us. How we slept, rose, learned, played, ate, inseparable. I couldn’t tell my own pulse from yours. We spilled ourselves like ink.’

Every single word of this novel was exquisite. I laughed at times, shed a tear at others. The best historical fiction should be a window into the past. In 'Learned By Heart', Donoghue takes us as close to the glass as we can go, and opens the curtains.

All the stars, and then a thousand more.

This is the story of Eliza Raine told over two time lines: in 1805 which she is in boarding school in York and in 1815 when she is, we discover, incarcerated at Clifton House, a small private lunatic asylum outside York.
The two stands of the story are told alternately although the emphasis is on the earlier years when Eliza was happy and looking forward to the future. She was initially shunned at school, being 'coloured' as her mother was Indian and her father a British 'company' man. She and her older sister were shipped 'home' to attend school. Until the arrival of Anne Lister at school, Eliza appears to have done as much as possible to stay under the radar and be a contrite and good pupil. Lister's arrival brings out something in Raine that she hadn't realised and she finds herself falling deeply in love with Lister.
Quite how the Raine of 1815 came about we don't really find out from the story, however the author's notes at the end imply it might have been a willing incarceration, at least initially. Raine's letters to Lister written in this year suggest she feels rejected despite their girlhood promises to each other.
The story is beautifully written by Emma Donoghue and clearly a huge amount of research has gone into sourcing the story from Lister's diaries and letters along with other records from the time. I found the story a slow burn, it took a while to get going and it was only when Lister arrived at school and the relationship between the girls was established that sparks flew. Having said that however, the details of school life, and social life of the time were fascinating and I loved the way the girls gossiped about the Prince Regent and Napoleon Bonaparte, almost as they might today about television celebrities.
I was very happy for the author's note at the end which cleared up a lot of questions and really should be read to clarify the fictionalised account of Raine and Lister's lives.
With thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for an arc copy in return for an honest review.

With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

I find Emma Donoghue consistently interesting. Like Room and Haven, Learned by Heart is set in a constrained environment and examines the relationships that develop therein.

The novel is set in a girls’ boarding school in York, King’s Manor, in 1805, with the narrative interspersed with excerpts from letters sent in 1815 which seem to be receiving no reply. The writer is one Eliza Raine, and the school narrative is initially also focussed on her. She is the base-born younger daughter of an East India company doctor and his Indian ‘wife’, sent back to England with her older sister at the age of six as the wards of a colleague of their father’s to be educated and brought up as Englishwomen. This is no Victorian horror story - the school is a fee-paying one and the girls are all daughters of well established minor gentry; Eliza and her sister will each come into a fortune of £4,000 on marriage or maturity. They are treated well, given the kind of education expected of a lady who will make a good marriage, and they have a surprising amount of leeway if your impressions of girls’ schools of this period have been formed by reading the likes of Jane Eyre.

School life is humdrum, interesting to the reader mainly for the light it sheds on surprisingly liberal attitudes to genteel illegitimacy and mixed race. Eliza is not the only outsider in the school, but she does experience casual racism because of her skin colour. There is a pecking order, with the likes of Eliza and her sister, the bastard girl Margaret, and Fanny with the withered arm, definitely pitied by the girls from more conventional backgrounds with more conventional looks. Eliza deals with it all by being diligent, studious and affable, and she values her own space in the attic near the servants’ rooms. So she is quite put out when the newest arrival is placed in her room. The new girl is one Anne Lister - at which point it belatedly dawned on me that what I was reading was the story of Gentleman Jack’s first lesbian love.

The story would work very well as a complete work of fiction but in fact it is meticulously and extensively researched. Its focus is on Eliza rather than Anne - historically Eliza is a rather shadowy figure, but it was with her that Anne Lister developed the code she would use in her journals throughout her life. The epistolary interludes slowly reveal a dark fate for Eliza, who is writing from the asylum in which she is voluntarily resident, and she was to remain institutionalised with various mental health problems, for most of the rest of her life. But the main story is a more joyful one, of a personality taught to repress itself which is awakened by the joy and discovery of first love and lust.

This is an enjoyable read and a skilful fictionalisation of an interesting figure in queer history, about whom more historical information will hopefully come to light as she is researched further. Don’t skip the author’s note at the end which describes the gestation of this book.

I’ve read many of Emma Donoghue’s books, and whether I like them or not is a 50/50 chance. This is because she is a spectacular author who can write a story based in any time period excellently, and not all of the stories she chooses to tell resonate with me. Learned By Heart was unfortunately in the less-liked 50% for me.

I loved the concept of the story. To understand what it was like to be homosexual in the early 1800s was fascinating, even more so that this was based on a true story. The book also gave great insight into what it was like to be Indian in the UK, and the finishing schools that were popular at the time. It was easy to see the immense amount of research that was put into telling this story.

However, Learned By Heart was too much of a slow burn for me. Once it did get to the start of Eliza and Raine’s relationship, things became a bit more interesting. The author did a really great job in conveying the emotion between the two. I also found the insight into Eliza’s time in an asylum interesting and would have liked to explore that avenue more. It felt the story ended just as it was getting interesting for me.

I also had a hard time with the characters. While I found them interesting, it was hard to connect with any. The lack of emotional connection made the book feel even longer.

I love Emma Donoghue, so chose to read this knowing nothing about the story but expecting a fabulous read. I was not disappointed. Set in York (a city I love to spend time in) and based on the true story of Eliza Raine and Anne Lister (Gentleman Jack), Donoghue brings to life events from the past which are sensitively and delicately addressed. Raine has an odd relationship with her sister, Jane, who is also at the school and seems to be looking for someone to give her hope for the future.

Raine and Lister fall in love during their time at Manor School in York in the 1800's. I was absolutely entranced by the way school life was depicted and felt that the two girls are drawn to each other because of their shared 'otherness' and extraordinary heritages. Raine, a British-Indian heiress, is being educated at Manor School when Lister arrives and the two girls are housed together in 'The Slope'. Their passionate affair is short lived when Lister leaves the school unexpectedly after two years. This book covers so much in such a short space of physical time - their attraction to each other develops slowly but results in a marriage of sorts.

The narrative switches between two timelines - school days and later in Raine's life when she is writing to an absent Lister. I was chilled late on in the book when I realised the significance of these two timelines: Raine ending up in the mental asylum that they both merrily discuss and mock during a school outing. This is a clever foreshadowing of future events.

I was fascinated and captivated from the beginning of this book and found the afterword by Donoghue compelling. This book has been so sensitively researched and constructed from as many facts as could be ascertained. I wanted to read on and learn more about both of these intriguing characters and cannot wait for my next visit to York when I will take my copy and follow in their footsteps as so much of what is mentioned (buildings, roads and landmarks)!

I did enjoy reading this book but perhaps not as much as others by the author. I think basing it on a historical character was a great premise, especially because of who the character actually is. Unfortunately, because of who she is we are left with quite a few parts of the story being quite mundane and generally not very much happening for a lot of the time. Emma Donoghue has made an attempt to make her pleasant but this doesn't really match the biography at the back which tells the real story and shows the character is not really sympathetic. Equally, it is always a pleasure to read about Anne Lister and her exploits. She does come across as spirited and lively as she was in her lifetime and I would recommend reading it, even if only to learn more about Lister herself!

Lovely storyline and loved the historical references. It was great to learn more about Anne Lister's life as I find her fascinating. Well written but a little slow paced at times.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

Good book loosely based on real historical events

Emma Donoghue’s new novel, Learned by Heart, is the story of Anne Lister and Eliza Raine, two real historical figures. Lister, best known for her diaries in which she writes about her lesbian relationships as well as her daily life in West Yorkshire, has been made famous to modern audiences thanks to the recent BBC/HBO drama series, Gentleman Jack. Eliza Raine, her first lover, is believed to be a possible inspiration for Bertha Mason, Mr Rochester’s wife in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

Eliza was born in Madras (now Chennai), the younger daughter of an Indian mother and an English father, who was working there as a surgeon for the East India Company. Following her father’s death, Eliza and her sister were sent to England to live with a Yorkshire family, the Duffins. We join Eliza at her boarding school in York, where she has made several friends but still feels that she doesn’t entirely fit in due to her background and skin colour. When Anne Lister arrives at the school one day in 1805 and is told to share Eliza’s bedroom, Eliza is immediately drawn to the new girl. Lister, as she prefers to be known, is a strong personality – intelligent, rebellious and an ‘outsider’ like Eliza herself. As the two grow closer, their friendship develops into romantic love, but as two fourteen-year-olds in 19th century England they are denied the freedom to be who they really are.

Interspersed with the account of their schooldays are several letters written by Eliza to Lister ten years later. Through these letters, we are aware from the beginning of the novel that Eliza will end up in an asylum, but we don’t know exactly how or why she came to be there. Although we do learn a little bit more as the story progresses, it’s not fully explained until Emma Donoghue’s author’s note at the end of the book. The novel itself concentrates almost entirely on Lister and Eliza’s time at the Manor School in York, something I hadn’t expected when I first started reading, and I do feel that rather than the letters, it would have been more interesting to have had a sequel continuing the story after they leave school and become adults.

After last year’s Haven, an unusual novel about a group of 7th century monks settling on an uninhabited island, Donoghue is on more familiar territory with this one (several of her earlier books have also been set in the 18th and 19th centuries). A huge amount of research has obviously gone into the writing of this book and her portrayal of everyday life in an English girls’ school during the time of the Napoleonic Wars feels vivid and real. However, I don’t think we really needed so many long, detailed descriptions of every game the girls played at school!

Anne Lister is an intriguing character and seeing her only through Eliza Raine’s eyes gives a real sense of the qualities that Eliza finds so attractive. It also means that we don’t fully get to know Lister or to understand her innermost thoughts and feelings, so she is always surrounded by a slight aura of mystery. I didn’t always like her and as she was clearly the dominant force in their relationship, I felt concerned for Eliza as it seemed obvious she was going to get hurt.

As I’ve said, I think I would have been more interested in learning about the adult lives of the characters, but I did still enjoy the book and thought it was a great introduction to the lives of these two fascinating women.