If you happen to identify as a wuh-luh-wuh – particularly the literary kind – and have also experienced grief, this novel is very much for you. If you’re neither, Bone Horn is still a hilarious, sexy and intelligent sapphic page-turner to curl up with this festive season. Expect sharp humour, curious plot twists, queer academic deep-dives and small but piercing insights on love, loss and life.
What’s ‘Bone Horn’ about?
It was about time we had a lesbian detective-style novel like Bone Horn. Brimming with queer cultural references and a whirlwind tour through Modernism’s favourite couple, the book follows our unnamed narrator: a former academic who has swapped scholarship for private investigation, hoping the newfound flexibility will help her parent her son while navigating the grief of losing her partner, May.
She’s soon contacted by a mysterious client – whom she simply calls the voice – and given an unusual assignment: to determine whether Alice B. Toklas (yes, the Alice B. Toklas, life partner of Gertrude Stein and fixture of the Parisian avant-garde) had… a horn.
If that sounds bizarre, don’t worry. It takes a few mentions before the significance of this “horn” begins to register emotionally or intellectually, which feels entirely intentional, a slow and sly unravelling of academic pretension.
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What stood out?
Before we learn the truth about the horn, Bone Horn takes us on a sharply written journey from London to Paris to San Francisco – via a Hemingway relative’s kitchen table and a Beat-inspired hotel run, inexplicably, by an investment bank.
As our protagonist gathers clues in search of the Bone Horn, she meanders through these cities encountering queer literary history, writerly egos, erotic encounters (the sort that make you smile coyly when reading on public transport), and an intriguing cast of characters who are convinced she’s a bottom in their eager and presumptuous pursuit – despite her enviable capacity for mystique, or at least, leaving people on read.
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And yes, the book really is about whether Alice B. Toklas had an actual horn. It also gently nods toward what Toklas and Stein were known for: their central role in modernism and their partnership that shaped 20th-century literary culture.
What begins as a curious and somewhat absurd quest becomes, steadily, a moving meditation on grief and motherhood. As the investigation deepens, so do the narrator’s reflections on loss, purpose, desire and the messy, unglamorous act of continuing to exist after someone you love is gone.
Both hilarious and poignant, the novel balances erotic absurdism with emotional clarity.
Excerpt
“What does anyone do with the horn of a famous Modernist’s wife […] I still didn’t know if this horn was real, or just a symbol, a metaphor, some cruel lesbian gossip. All I knew was that I needed to find out.”
Verdict
More exacting readers may find the frequency of the sex scenes a touch predictable and ridiculous – real life between two queer women that have hitherto been strangers tends to involve more mutual pining and prolonged ambiguity than the brisk propositions we get here, not once but multiple times. Or perhaps that’s just one’s own experience. Another also involves a police officer who owns handcuffs that are not used for their work, that they seemingly always have on them for the reason of pulling. But honestly? You forgive it for the thrill.
This isn’t a novel that will change your life; it’s not trying to be spiritually profound or world-altering. It is, however, densely enjoyable, playful, sexy and original – with some painfully accurate reflections on grief, love and queer motherhood. I would recommend this for fans of Big Swiss by Jen Beagin.
Also, it references the TV show Bones, which automatically earns extra points.
Star Rating
Need more book recs? Take a peek at last month’s book review of ‘Valencia‘ by Michelle Tea.
Nonchalant x
