Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

I feel like I start every book review by talking about how I don't know how this book cam across my radar, but it's true. I don't remember. If you recommended it to me, thank you! (It was Stephany! Thanks, Stephany!)

In Last Night at the Telegraph Club, we meet Lily Hu, a seventeen-year-old Chinese American girl living in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1954. She starts to fall in love with another girl at school, but it's not safe for women to be in a relationship together, especially maybe an interracial couple.

I adored this book. The feelings of love were so strong and wonderful. Lily's confusion was clear and made complete sense. The descriptions of Chinatown and the gay bar scenes were so vivid that it was almost as if I were there. 

I feel like I write about how young adult fiction is not for me anymore and I should stop reading it. But then I stumble across a book like this and think THIS IS WHY I KEEP TRYING YA. What a heartwarming story. I'm knocking off half a point because the historical flashbacks were dumb and didn't add to the main story, but I really liked it! 4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

She spotted her family toward the middle of the crowd, gathered together on the scratchy old army blanket stenciled with her father’s name—capt. joseph hu—in white paint. (page 4)

My parents were in the Army and we had a lot of scratchy green Army blankets. My mom used to sew those blankets inside some fabric and those were great blankets. I still have Ducky and pull it out when it's super cold. 

Respectable. The word felt square, immovable, like a sturdy box with all four corners equally weighted. (page 30)

I don't know why, but this quote reminded me of when Willa Cather described a woman as "short and square and sturdy-looking, like her house." I didn't write up a full review of that book, but I did a short write-up on this post and I am laughing because I remember that quote five years later. 

They had been in the same classes together for years, but it was as if they had been figurines in an automated diorama, moving on mechanical tracks that approached each other but never intersected until now. (page 56)

This imagery. I think it's going to stick with me. 

She had never been out this late on her own, perhaps never even in the company of her parents. (page 140)

I remember the first time I went out with friends in college and we stayed out until closing time. It was the first time I'd ever even so much as been awake at 2am. What a lovely bit of work Lo is doing in this book. 

Hat mentions:

It had been accompanied by an illustration of a woman (her curves were apparent) in a top hat and tails, with the curls of her hair poufing out beneath her hat. (page 21)

There was a mother-daughter pair near a case of hats, and the teenage girl giggled as her mother pinned a blue pillbox on her curled blond hair. (page 25)

Her mother was wearing an out-of-date, square-shouldered brown suit and a matching brown hat, something that Lily had only ever seen her wear to church. (page 25)

Inside, they stopped at the hat check first, where a young Chinese woman dressed in a red-and-gold cheongsam took their coats and his hat. (page 130)

Men passed her, their faces obscured by hats, while women clicked by in their heels. (age 141)

She was dressed all in black with a tiny netted hat on her head, and she was seated alone in front of her plate of chow mein. (page 171)

...Caucasian boy, perhaps five years old, was standing outside the construction zone, holding on to the hand of his mother, who was holding on to her hat. (page 210)

She wore a top hat and held a cigarette between her lips, and she had a mischievous light in her eyes. (page 258)