The IHOP Papers

Years ago, before their offices left Washington DC, I did some volunteer work for the Lambda Literary Foundation:

Welcome to the Lambda Literary Foundation, the country’s leading organization for LGBT literature. Our mission is to celebrate LGBT literature and provide resources for writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians – the whole literary community.

I had known about them before, but my interests in learning more about LGBTQ literature had been steadily growing as I spent more and more time reading various texts as a "break" from my required academic texts. Thank goodness, more and more, I've been able to integrated the two and destroy any pretense of them being mutually exclusive (which was never what I thought).

In any case, I ran across Ali Liebegott's novel The IHOP Papers first on-line, and then again in my local queer bookstore, Lambda Rising. I was drawn to it because it's Liebegott's debut novel, and I couldn't help but have a soft spot in my heart for such "firsts". Besides, Liebegott's The Beautifully Worthless won the Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction, which was an added endorsement. Of course, it also helped that Liebegott set the story in San Francisco. I bought the book during spring break, and was feeling homesick; reading about San Francisco isn't nearly as good as being there, but it is a small comfort.

I didn't read it right away, but soon after...and since then it's been sitting on my desk (adding to the piles). I've been trying to get into the habit here on my blog and other places online of writing about what I've read, and wanted to do just that with The IHOP Papers.

Something, though, has kept me from doing so...

In my efforts to finally clean up my desk this morning, I once again ran across Liebegott's novel...still waiting for my review...

I don't know that I'm any closer to writing that review now than I was when I had finished the book, but I do now know why. There are so many threads of the main character's life that resonate within me. Some are faint echos, made beautiful through the power of nostalgia. Some are haunting moans, continually lingering, but not necessarily menacingly so. Some are familiar tunes, offering solace and comfort. Some are quite vibrations, still fighting to reach their full force.

The book certainly touched a lot of strings within me...what chord the book ultimately played, I'm still finding out. Not unlike how Francesca begins to learn to play the cello in the book's final chapter, I feel I'm just beginning to listen, read, and play the music of my life. In many ways, the song she begins her journey with, "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" is quite apropos for us both!

The book's back cover offers us the following:

In this hilarious and heartfelt debut novel, Francesca, a disgruntled twenty-year-old lesbian IHOP waitress, tries desperately to pull together the pieces of her young, scattered life. Newly arrived in San Francisco, she has fled her hometown, where she rented her childhood room from the new family who moved in when her parents moved out. But the move to San Francisco is no mere coincidence. A lonely virgin searching for her sexual identity and obsessed with her philosophy teacher, Francesca follows her professor, Irene to California, where Irene has relocated in order to live in a nonviolent household with her two young lovers.

Once in San Francisco, however, Francesca is forced by dire circumstances to work at the local pancake house. Much to her dismay, the new employer requires Francesca to wear a ridiculous Heidi of the Alps uniform--which is almost as humiliating as serving the crazed array of speed freaks and other graveyard shift misfits. Half-suicidal, half-euphoric, Francesca seeks distraction in anything or anyone from her unrequited love for Irene.