There’s breakfast in bed on your birthday, the text break-up, the great Valentine’s Day date and the night when your romantic partner prefers binge-watching Netflix to having sex.
But nothing leaves you so blissed out, yet so sucker-punched as your first crush. Especially if you’re young, queer and in the throes of your first love. “Olivia,” by Dorothy Strachey, rereleased on June 9, is an elegant, evocative, absorbing love story.
Set in the 19th century in Les Avons, a finishing school outside Paris, it takes us into the solar plexus of Olivia, 16, in the midst of her first infatuation.
Olivia, an English girl who’s been sent by her family to Les Avons, has a crush on Mlle Julie, a founder of the school and one of its headmistresses.