Kim Narby’s debut novel, Saturn Returning, opens with an explosion. When self-possessed wallflower Jordan meets golden-retriever-personified Trace during her freshman year, there’s an undeniable spark between them. But after the beautiful and capricious Silvia transfers to their school, Trace immediately falls head over heels for her, and the three women soon form a trio that feels more like a family than a friend group. Ten years later, at the peak of their Saturn Returns, Trace and Silvia are engaged and living in Seattle, and Jordan has moved to New York City to pursue a career in photography. Everything is as it should be. Everyone has gotten everything they thought they wanted.
Until Trace kisses her fiancé goodbye, goes to work, calls Jordan, and confesses that she is in love with her.
The revelation launches the novel into motion, and Narby never once takes her foot off the gas. She balances three different perspectives across two separate timelines with so many threads to follow, but I never felt lost. This is in part due to the book’s remarkable pacing. The present-day timeline spans one week but never feels rushed, while the past timeline spans ten years but never drags. I read the entire book in one sitting, spurred on by Narby’s propulsive prose. She is a remarkably observant writer whose characters are so human you can’t help but get sucked into their emotional hurricane. You’ll want to wrap your arms around them just as often as you’ll want to shake them by the shoulders and scream WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO YOURSELVES?
Like the Fibonacci spiral she wants to get tattooed someday, Trace’s ultimate goal is to have a “mathematically perfect” life. Her dream is to climb the corporate ladder and achieve all the traditional domestic milestones of success: an apartment with a view, a dog, a wife. Whenever she dates someone, her entire world narrows to that person. When Silvia enters her life, Trace latches onto her with a single-minded obsession that made me cringe with recognition. I have been Trace more times than I’d like to admit, convinced that a loving, reciprocal romantic relationship would fix all my problems. I have lost myself trying to shapeshift into whoever my partner needed to be, and we see Trace doing the same as she feels Silvia pulling away. She surprises Silvia with a cat on her birthday, despite being a dog person, and agrees to polyamory even though the thought of it makes her literally nauseous. This myopia prevents Trace from actually being able to see or listen to anything that doesn’t confirm her worldview, such as Silvia’s increasing dissatisfaction with the relationship. Trace reminds me of many Capricorns and baby gays I’ve known, convinced their first serious relationship with a woman will be The One, and married to a rigid, conventional vision of the future.
Silvia struggles with what I like to call the Fire Sign Fallacy: the belief that a new city, a new place, a new person will fix all her problems. She jumps from passion to passion, hobby to hobby, unable to settle. When faced with the reality that the domestic life she’s built with Trace might not be right for her, she can’t bring herself to rip off the bandaid and end the relationship. She flees across the world to Lesotho for a job with the Peace Corps, leaving Trace in limbo. When she returns from her time abroad, traumatized and muted, she proposes polyamory in lieu of actually being honest and discussing why the relationship isn’t working for her. She is as terrified to be alone as she is terrified of being seen, and the clash between these contradictory fears leads her to lash out at the people closest to her. Though I often found myself frustrated with her choices, my Sagittarius stellium empathizes deeply with her restlessness. There’s a unique pain in choosing a safe, stable life because society has told you it’s what you’re supposed to want, only to wake up years down the line and realize it’s killing you. Queer stories often tackle this through the lens of a character waking up from their “heterosexual” life and realizing they are queer, but I think there’s something powerful in showing this dissatisfaction through a character who is already so certain of her sexuality. The self-discovery Silvia experiences throughout the novel has nothing to do with her queerness and everything to do with her.
Similar to Silvia, Jordan has managed to build the life everyone expects her to want, but quickly finds herself wanting to give it all up. In the present-day timeline, she works as a professional photographer for a major marketing agency in New York, a move she made due to Trace’s aggressive enthusiasm. Another major trope subversion in this novel is that of New York as a magical city of possibility, as the ultimate end goal of any young person striving to become something. Jordan hates New York with an intensity I found original and quite amusing. She has little tolerance for social niceties or corporate small talk and absolutely no patience for whimsy. She possesses the classic Aries trait of being able to cut through the bullshit and see everyone for exactly who they are. Her character is a breath of fresh air, a respite from the intensity and dramatics of Trace and Silvia’s relationship.
Narby’s writing style shifts with each character, creating subtle and clever distinctions between perspectives. When writing Trace, she tends to stick with short, direct sentences and uses possessive language: Trace “clutches pens like weapons” and tries to maintain a firm “grasp” on Silvia. When writing Jordan, her language becomes tighter and more controlled. Moments of precise observation of other people’s bodies and actions are peppered throughout her sections, emphasizing Jordan’s role as observer, as photographer, constantly seeing others, but always maintaining a wall between them and herself. When writing Silvia, Narby’s sentences are longer and more descriptive, often lapsing into a quasi-stream-of-consciousness that reflects the fluidity of Silvia’s desires.
I should mention: This is the most lesbian book I have ever read. I’m serious. Saturn Returning is packed with references to lesbian subcultures that feel so natural: But I’m A Cheerleader!, Alanis Morissette, Gold Star Discourse™, tarot, and astrology. Silvia’s thing for hands, Jordan lusting for the girls that braided her hair at childhood sleepovers, Trace’s snapbacks in every color of the rainbow. The narrative doesn’t rely on these stereotypes; it’s just enhanced by them. In less skilled hands, this book could feel like a caricature of lesbianism. In Narby’s hands, it feels like a realistic representation of lesbian lives, told by someone who is living one herself. As a lesbian in her late twenties who has survived her share of dyke drama, this is the book I never dared to even hope for. If I had read this in college, I would’ve saved myself at least two and a half heartbreaks. As it is, I feel lucky to have found it three years before my own Saturn Return. At least now, I know what to expect.
If you’re put off by the phrase “love triangle,” fear not. I won’t spoil the ending for readers, but what I will say is that Saturn Returning completely subverts the trope in such a refreshing way. After living with Trace and Silvia for a few years, Jordan moves to New York, and Trace finds herself confused by the depths of her grief: “It felt wrong to be so dependent on a friend, to feel so bereft about a platonic relationship.” This book is not about romance, not really. It’s about a larger kind of love, a more complex, messier love that lives in the murky space between platonic, familial, and romantic. Friendships are culturally devalued to an unnecessary degree, generally always put below the pursuit of “True Love” in the hierarchy of human relationships. But friendships can be just as intimate as romantic relationships, if not more so. I commend Narby’s decision to write a novel that celebrates those platonic bonds and elevates them to the same level as romantic relationships, particularly in regards to queerness, when so much of the experience is tied up in who you’re dating by nature.
Towards the end of the novel, Jordan wonders, “Was it possible to truly understand who someone was without hurting them so badly they were stripped entirely raw?” When you have known someone for a decade, you learn so much more than their least favorite food and how they like their martinis. You know the exact insults that will cut the deepest. You know the exact insecurities to press upon like a bruise. Narby does not flinch away from depicting the ugliness and the horror we inflict on those we love the most, but she never loses sight of her characters’ humanity, no matter how much pain they cause each other. If there’s one thing she wants you to understand, it’s that there are no heroes or villains here. Only imperfect, real people, trying and failing and trying again to love each other well. We are always going to hurt each other. That’s just a part of being alive. It’s where we go from the hurt that matters. With Saturn Returning, Kim Narby has created a profound and affecting portrait of the queer something-slightly-more-than-friendships we make in our twenties that feel cosmically destined but also divinely doomed.
