Hymn to Moray Eels
Mireille Best’s multifaceted novel Hymn to Moray Eels is about queer attraction, social expectations, and the intricacies of women’s friendships in 1950s France.
Adolescence made sixteen-year-old Mila feel exposed and vulnerable. Aware of her developing attraction to other women, she imagines that she is growing wings that need to be “clipped.” She is also troubled by her family’s poverty.
Frustrated by her daughter’s emotional changes, Mila’s mother agrees to send her to a sanatorium. There, Mila befriends boisterous Josette, ethereal Lili, and Nicoli, who can cry on cue from an “unending reserve” of tears. The girls interact with quarrelsome camaraderie, speaking in standout metaphors and slang. Their close dynamic is detailed through Mila’s incisive yet agitated stream-of-consciousness narration.
Mila’s occasional same-sex intrigues are organic and intimate but also fleeting. She later flirts with a staff member, Paule; they share almost combative eroticism, but their differences in age and status skew the relationship. Paule maintains a position of continued dominance, fondling Mila’s hair with possessive force and asserting her authority when challenged. When Paule becomes interested in another girl, Mila feels rejected and angered. Her revenge comes in the form of a comical inpatient production of The Little Mermaid that contains a coded message for Paule during the performance.
As a dramatic device, Mila’s direction of the play combines engaging dark humor with her increasing resolve to escape both Paule and the sanatorium. And while the book ends with a sense of wry and tenuous hope, its conclusion is shadowed by the realities of the era. Within the confinements of social norms, Mila will have to repress her true personality to stay out of “trouble.”
Sharp-edged yet poignant, the historical novel Hymn to Moray Eels contrasts queer coming-of-age emotions with the pressures of postwar conformity.
Reviewed by
Meg Nola
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