This read a bit like a piece of Year 10 homework. Firstly research someone in history who interests you - 'ooh I will go for that woman in Gentleman Jack off the television - well done, says your teacher, you have filled your notebook with lots of facts - now go and imagine how all these facts came about, go and practice your creative writing. So little Emma takes her Smiggle notebook and smelly pen, and writes all about Lister and her friend at school. How the teachers were rotten, but they had a lovely time in their attic away from the other bitchy girls and stinky older sister. After a while though Emma has to move on from the ripping time her heroine had at school, there are only so many secret balls one can go to, and the other girl has to be despatched to the lunatic asylum. This bit seemed to be a bit sparse on facts - how did she get there, what happened to her fortune, how did she know all about Lister's love affairs?
I finished it but it didn't set me alight.

I am a fan of this author and particularly enjoyed one of her previous novels Room. This novel has a Jane Austen feel to it perhaps mixed with Dickensian. elements. The novel is a historical novel, told from the point of view of a young girl at boarding school in. early 19th century northern England.in particular York
I love the authors writing style, which is an enjoyable easy to read experience. Her characterisations are spot-on, and the books characters are immediately recognisable real people.
The young girl develops a relationship with one of her school fellows and the resulting lesbian affair includes one of the most beautiful sex scenes that I have read recently the tenderness of the encounter was memorable.
As I was reading, it became more and more clear to me that there were similarities between this book, and I television series, I’d seen Gentleman, Jack . I wasn’t aware when I read the book that the story was based on the real life story of figures including Anne Lister the main character of the TV series. She was a well-known lesbian at the time and was known for wearing men’s clothes.. I tend to read without the reading too much of the blurb of books, and therefore I was not aware that this story was based on historical figures. .
I felt there were some times within the novel that the author was constrained by having to make a story fit to the historical facts and that, and that on occasion, this did affect the flow of the story
The novel is released in the UK on the 24th of August 2023 by pan Macmillan,
This review will appear in a Goodreads net, galley, UK, and on my book blog bionicSarahsbooks.wordpress.com

Thank you for the advanced copy, unfortunately this copy is quite jumbled and impossible to read. I will be sure to read the published book when it is available! Thank you again.

I have loved lots of Emma Donaghue's books, especially Slammerkin, Room, The wonder and The pull of the stars.
Her 2 most recent books Haven and this book Learned by heart just did not hit the spot for me. I think I need less words and more action to make a good story.
I have to be honest and admit I didn't finish this. I just couldn't find the will to carry on. It was just conversation, after conversation amongst teenage school girls. None of which was particularly interesting. I kept waiting for something to happen. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC but unfortunately this one wasn't for me.

Who would have thought that a book about two girls attending a boarding school in the early 19th century would be so fascinating. I was completely absorbed in their lives, their relationship and the whole school-life scenario. The prose is beautiful, so many phrases that I read over and over for the sheer brilliance of Donoghue's use of language. The fact that it's based on a true story is icing on the cake with the author's note at the end giving further information on the massive amount of research involved and adding even more depth to the story. Wonderful and highly recommended.

4* Learned By Heart is the incredible, intense and deeply moving story of the relationship between 2 girls at a York boarding school in the early 19th century.

Eliza Raine is sent, along with her sister, from their home in Madras to England as young children. By the time Eliza reaches York, both parents have died and she is sent to Manor House boarding school where, as a girl of mixed race, she always feels like an outsider. Eliza sleeps in a small room in the eves next to the maids and is stunned to find an extra bed has been added to her room one afternoon.

Anne Lister explodes into Eliza’s life. Adventurous, witty and bold, she is the antithesis of the young ladies in the boarding school who are being groomed for marriage. As the two become close, it is a friendship that will change lives.

Emma Donoghue has intricately researched the early lives of Lister (some may be familiar with the BBC series Gentleman Jack written by Sally Wainwright and based on Lister) and Raine to create this deeply moving reconstruction. In part love story but marred by horrific prejudice and a window into the lives of young women in York at the time. It’s a fantastic book, all the better for being so ensconced in true events.

Thanks to the Pan MacMillan and Netgalley for an ARC.

Learned By Heart is set in 1805 and 1815 and imagines the relationship between Eliza Raine, a girl born in India to an Englishman and Indian woman, and Anne Lister, recently better known as Gentleman Jack of the popular BBC drama of the same name.

Anne Lister's extraordinary life was documented by her in extensive diaries and she is believed to have had relationships with dozens of women during her life. She attended King's Manor school from the age of 14 where Eliza was already a student of the same age.

Eliza and her older sister Jane sail from India when Eliza is six to begin a new life, without their mother, in England. Two years after they set sail, their father dies, leaving them in the care of a friend and colleague. He arranges for the sisters to board at King's Manor where they are the only 'dark' girls. Life at the school is dull and full of privations as well as petty rules. Anne Lister's arrival is a burst of light and fresh air and she is soon sharing an attic room with Eliza.

Interspersed with the story of Eliza and Anne's growing friendship and eventual sexual relationship, are letters written ten years later from Eliza to Anne. These letters are never responded to and often end abruptly and juxtapose Eliza's happiness back in 1805. They also serve as intrigue, keeping the reader wondering what has happened to Eliza to leave her in what appears to be a very difficult situation.

I did enjoy getting to know Eliza and had real sympathy and liking for her, particularly in the first half of the book. The setting of the grey, drab school is very evocatively written and each of the other schoolgirls keenly drawn. This is unsurprising given how prolific Emma Donoghue is as a writer but, for me, the story didn't quite keep its hold on me, perhaps as we stay in the insular world and relationship of the Eliza and Anne throughout. I would recommend reading the book though as it is an interesting, well-written story.

Based on the life of Anne Lister, now famous (or infamous) owing to the television adaptation ‘Gentleman Jack’, the book explores the love between Anne and Eliza, a childhood friend who becomes her lover.. The story has its joyous moments of the exploration of love between two girls, and into womanhood, but it also has a darker side in its focus on the deteriorating mental health of Eliza - or is it a response to the attitudes towards homosexuality of the time? The themes in the book are sensitively explored, and the story moves with steady momentum. A book to be savoured and enjoyed, but not one for those who like a fast paced story - I loved the almost ethereal quality of the writing.

I'm always keen to read any new works from Emma Donoghue, her early novel Slammerkin is a really fantastic read. This novel is a fictionalised account of the friendship that developed between Anne Lister ( Of Shibden Hall who there has been a resurgence of interest in due in large part to the Gentleman Jack TV series) and Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress born in India to an Indian mother and White English father who along with her older sister are boarders at a Yorkshire school for girls. It is clear that Emma Donoghue has done meticulous research and uses the letters that Anne and Eliza exchnaged in later life to inform her narrative but the plot lacked pace. It seemed to have no momentum or destination in sight. I actually put the text down a few times and took several days break before reading on as it wasnt a page turner for me to devour. It felt rather worthy rather than likeable.

I knew little about Lister - I’d heard of the diaries, and the subsequent TV shows, but had read / seen neither.
This book immediately drew me in - I remember the all encompassing feelings that you have as a teenager. The utter joy of the friendship as it develops; and the interspersed letters from a future point where all is not as it could have been…

I generally like Emma Donoghue books and some I would rate as 5 stars. This one fell slightly short of the mark but it was still really well written, and I learnt a lot about Raine and Lister's lives. Rounding up from 3.5 to 4 stars.

Emma Donoghue's historical fiction is, as ever, strikingly good. And she hits the right notes here (I would query a little of the 'life in India' background but that's only from the perspective of someone very well-acquainted with the original material - there's no mention, for instance, of Tamil). It's an ambitious, perhaps slightly risky book (given the way that Ann Lister's become such a heroine) and I think works, very well. Recommend.

Rounding up to three stars

As a whole I enjoy Donoghue, but this one left me a bit flat.
I took time out from it a few times and could never fully get interested.
It comes across as well researched,
At least I feel I know something of the real life characters now, which before I hadn't.
Just not the book for me this time sadly.

Learned By Heart is a historical novel about Eliza Raine and her relationship with Anne Lister whilst they were both at school in York. As the daughter of a British father and Indian mother, Eliza stands out, boarding alone at school whilst her older sister is a day pupil. Her solitude is broken when a new student, Anne Lister, arrives at the school, throwing usual convention and routine out the window.

It isn't surprising given the modern resurgence in interest in Anne Lister that Emma Donoghue has gone for writing a novel about some of her life, but it is interesting that the book takes a very different approach to the TV series Gentleman Jack by focusing not on Lister as the central character, but on Eliza. The book is from Eliza's point of view as a schoolgirl, but is intercut with letters she is writing in adulthood, which is a nice way of bringing both the youthful love story and the reality of what happened to her later on without just making the narrative do a huge time jump. As I've already read a couple of books about Anne Lister, the plot was as expected, more about their deepening relationship than much actually happening, and the ending is quite quick, but the letter at the end rounds off the story. If it wasn't based on a true story, there probably would've been more drama in the narrative, but most of the drama in this book comes from the gaps in the story afterwards, as told in part by the letters.

It is packed with detail and from Donoghue's afterword, you can see the amount of research that went into it (as someone who lives in York and sometimes goes to King's Manor for work, I did appreciate that it felt very accurate). I'm not a huge fan of historical fiction, but I appreciated that you didn't feel like all the historical detail was piled on, and the afterword shows what was used in the narrative and where Donoghue focused on telling a story. The book is an exercise in imagining someone's life who has far less documented detail than someone like Anne Lister, who wrote so much down and has therefore been written about and fictionalised a fair amount.

If you're already interested in Anne Lister, this book is likely to be a fresh take on telling part of her story through the lens of another person. It is mostly a story about young love between outsiders, but also gives a glimpse into some of the whirlwind left behind Anne Lister. I found it well crafted, but as I'm not a huge historical fiction fan and I already knew what was going to happen, it didn't quite grip me as it might others.

Fiction based on the true story of two girls who fell in love in C19th England. The book shifts backwards and forwards from the school years to 10 or do years later when one is writing to the other.

I enjoyed the first third of the book very much, the next third less do and by the end I was loosing interest. The first third focussed on the school experience - how it was though girls should be “finished” and the views of the empire

That’s quite a different thing,” Miss Lewin reproves her. “The French Enemy is brutally invading the kingdoms of Europe, rather than winning them over by patent superiority of leadership as the British have done across the Empire.”

Once the relationship between Eliza and Lester developed, I was less interested

Thanks to Netgallery for the ARC

enjoyed Room a lot so was excited to read this book. I knew nothing about the subject matter which is the story of a passionate romance which begins when two girls, Lister and Eliza, meet at school.

This is based on a true story and the lengthy diaries kept by Lister, Donoghue did extensive and lengthy research in preparation for writing this novel. It didn’t grab me in quite the same way as Room but is definitely worth reading.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a review copy.