Hanako is a young woman who has traveled from Japan to meet her favorite author. Volume 1 follows Hanako as she meets the beautiful, yet tragic Lady Alice and enters into her service. We watch their relationship deepen and their secrets come to light in Volume 2. Here we are, then, in the final volume and its hard to imagine that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And yet.

One of the burdens of writing historical fiction is, quite obviously, history. As Dr. Pepperco writes a story explicitly set in a time and place where the society would, could and did place women in mental institutions for the crime of independent thinking or non-conforming behavior, it takes commitment to write a better end. Volume 3 of Goodbye, My Rose Garden has that commitment. Therefore, as we watch over them benevolently, we see Alice and Hanako meet women of like mind, find solace in each other and create both the tunnel and the light for one another.

I’ve been talking a lot recently about media that imagines a better way forward. I also feel there is room for stories that supplies us a better way to look backward. Not every story needs an unhappy ending….but more to the point, not every real story had an unhappy ending. Some 130 years previous to the setting of this book, and some 300 miles to the northwest in Wales, about 6 hours by car now, Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler lived together and built a joyful life for themselves. (I find all arguments that they didn’t have a sexual relationship because they didn’t leave proof to be absolutely idiotic. Who does that? They called each other wife, let’s not be dumbasses.) Let us look to the Ladies of Llangollen then, for Alice and Hanako’s new life, in which they choose to live somewhere quietly together, supporting themselves as writers and raising a lovely rose garden.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 3
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

I appreciated some of the visual touches in this book, but once again, far more important were the literary references. Victor Franks may not have been real, but the other writers whose works are mentioned, are. While it’s not in Hastings, I recommend to you The Feminist Bookshop in Brighton, another UK beach town with a long, queer history, where you can find classics like Kate Chopin’s writing and newer works, maybe a biography of Ann Lister, as well as a really terrific comics section, with a fair bit of lesbian representation…and even a Yuri manga or two! So, when this pandemic is over, maybe you and your girl can just play at being Hanako and and Alice for a day in a nice little queer-friendly bookstore in a English beachside town. ^_^

My sincere thanks to Seven Seas for the review copy! It’s always a pleasure to see how the Seven Seas team handles work like this, which has the interesting challenge of both time period and English ideas being translated from Japanese back into English. Nice work by translator Amber Tamosaitis, adapter Cae Hawksmoor and letterer Kaitlyn Wiley and the whole Seven Seas crew!