Before reading Trio, I already knew that this book/subsequent play was so controversial because of its “lesbian themes” that it ended Baker’s career for decades. And that lens is, for better or worse, tinting my entire experience of the book!

Trio, in three “acts”, follows the love triangle between an esteemed female college professor, her TA, and a cater-waiter who ruins their life in the 1940s. Janet Logan is an ennui-laden ingenue who shuffles around with stacks of term papers and is at the beck and call of her professor (who she lives with) (and is obviously her lover). But in the first act—an academic party scene—she meets Ray, poor, yet charming and observant, and they immediately connect. Her professor, femme and very mommy, bosses Janet around too much and Ray thinks Janet should just quit her career and marry him. 

The two things that are hooking me. One, the novel is structurally a play…. which is one of my favorite craft techniques. I LOVE a tight focus, and Baker is doing is masterfully. The settings are so clear and lived in, and the characters really move within them. There is a lot of dialogue, so the pacing and timing is very even, and the dialogue is good! Quippy, philosophical, biting. Also the three scenes are wonderfully picked, from the lavishness of the party to a penniless love nest. 

Second, it is so fascinating to see the limits of homosexuality in a “big” published book from the 1940s. This book wasn’t “pulp,” but literary fiction, but Baker of course had to uphold certain tropes to be published. But when reading it you can see through it almost, the erasures of their relationship (which is made explicit in the book when Janet tells Ray she’s basically too damaged to marry him because Pauline has ruined her and he responds by sobbing facedown on his couch). But when Pauline is talking to Janet, there IS a very real depiction of queer love. Pauline has forged a house for them, a life, she’s sacrificed and enmeshed their careers (but blah blah Pauline is also an evil lesbian.) And Baker was a queer woman with a very similar background to our female characters (French academia) 

Anyway, this book is tragically out of print and used copies are few and far between. It certainly doesn’t hold up to modern ideas of a “lesbian” book, but placing it back in its context made for a very compelling read 

“What would it be like to know this woman, to put a hand out and touch her, and hear her talking to you, to have her give you the key to the medicine chest and tell you to be asleep when she got home? What would it be like to see her at night, and then in the morning, and meet her somewhere and have lunch with her? What would she say when she gave you a brown orchid, or would she write it?”