Tragic
Coolness by Giselle Renarde
October,
2018
As
Tatyana – Tats to her family – and her sister Oka pick berries in
their family orchard, two figures approach from the distance. One is
Oka’s lover, Len – a transman who has captured blonde lesbian
Oka’s heart and imagination. Tagging along is a stranger, Len’s
acquaintance Eugene Onegin.
Tats
has a strong urge to run. Some intuition warns her that this newcomer
will bring tragedy and pain. Before she can escape, however, he has
joined them, and she’s lost:
She looked at him, and he looked at her, and her heart nearly exploded. Attractive and poetic. She hadn’t met a man like him since university. Men like this were bad news then, but Tats was older now. Maybe she would handle herself a little better, a little more like an adult and less like an obsessive teen.
Aside
from being young and handsome, Eugene is elegant, cultured, cynical,
and terminally bored with life. “E is Eugene who died of ennui,”
Tats jokes during their first meeting, but she turns out to be right.
Her premonition of heartbreak comes to pass as she succumbs to her
desperate, visceral attraction. Their incandescent coupling convinces
her that she has finally found her soul mate. Eugene, however, is
gone when she wakes, leaving her without a word but with (as she
discovers later) a most permanent memento: a child growing in her
womb.
Eugene’s
abandonment tears Tats apart. The next time he shows up, she tries to
tell him about her pregnancy, but his clear disinterest in love or
family make her hold her tongue. Devastation and death follow Eugene
wherever he wanders. After he is responsible for a fatal accident
involving his friend Len, he disappears from Tatyana’s life for
nearly a decade. When he steps back onto the scene, he discovers that
everything has changed – that he now fiercely craves the woman he
discarded in the past, but that she is forever beyond his reach.
Giselle
Renarde is best known as an author of erotica, often queer or kinky,
but her talents are too creative and diverse to be pigeon-holed.
Tragic
Coolness
is a remarkable book, evocative and compelling, unquestionably a
literary feat. It is in fact a re-imagining of Alexander Pushkin’s
classic verse novel EugeneOnegin,
the source of many literary references including Tchaikovsky’s
opera of the same name. However, with contemporary allusions and
LGBTQ themes, Ms. Renarde has made the material distinctly her own.
Still, there are echoes of poetry in the dialogue. The rhythm of the
prose owes much to art, and might be expected to distance the reader
from the characters, but that does not happen. Tatyana and Eugene
remain real and believable despite the deliberate craft evident in
the novella’s structure.
After
reading Tragic Coolness, I became quite curious about the
original. The translations I’ve found thus far have been turgid and
opaque, but I have some hope of locating a version that helps me
better understand Ms. Renarde’s inspiration.
Tragic
Coolness is not a casual book designed primarily for
entertainment. The title is apt; the ending is far darker than most
erotica or romance readers might like. Nevertheless, I recommend it.
It offers a deeper sort of satisfaction that will stay with you after
you’ve forgotten your latest happily-ever-afters.
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