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Amazing Lesbian Novels; Of the published sort
Topic Started: Sep 2 2006, 02:35 PM (11,103 Views)
abzug
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In love with a prisoner
We've got a great thread going about lesbian films people have enjoyed, but as far as I know, we don't have one about lesbian literature (novels, poetry etc). I know there is a ton of terrific fanfic out there, but let's keep this to published writing (if someone else wants to start a general fanfic reccomendation thread, go for it!).

To start things off, of course I'll mention Sarah Waters:
Tipping the Velvet
Fingersmith
The Night Watch
(I didn't enjoy Affinity, her second novel, but it does have a women in prison theme, so it could be interesting to folks on this board)
The thing I love about Sarah Waters is that she is such a good storyteller--her novels are all real page-turners--and yet she doesn't sacrifice literary quality (ie character and thematic development, enjoyable use of language etc).

Now, for some more obscure lesbian novels which I found to be incredibly well-written:

Some Girls by Kristin McCloy
This book was reccomended to me by someone on this board, and it is incredible. Great language, dynamic and interesting characters, and a lovely exploration of a "straight" woman realizing she is not so straight. Plus it takes place in NYC, so there's a lot of local color for New Yorkers to enjoy.

The Sopranos by Alan Warner
This novel is more of an ensemble piece, so only one of the many intertwined plotlines could be termed lesbian, but it is about friendships between women (or, girls in this case, since they are all about 17), and is just brilliantly written. Slightly surreal in writing style. Takes place in Scotland, when a group of teenagers travel from a tiny coastal town to Edinburgh for a choral competition.

The Sea of Light by Jenifer Levin
I love this novel. It's about lesbian swimmers. But it's much better than your typical sports novel, and it's much better than your typical lesbian novel. The narrative voice shifts from character to character, and in the end it's really about how we heal from trauma.

The Law of Return by Alice Bloch
OK, here I am getting really obscure, but in the days before Sarah Waters, you had to really search for decently-written lesbian fiction, and this novel is one of the ones I found. It's about an American Jewish woman who moves to Israel and falls in love. But it's really about identity etc. Of course it's out of print, but you can order used copies online.

OK, that's enough to get us started. Everyone else jump in with your favorite lesbian novels!
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Jules2
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Oh wow, are you both for me?
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Fingersmith! Hands down, that is the best i've read.


I love it because it is a lovestory and a thriller. Most times you'll read a thriller and all of a sudden the two main characters get together. Or you'll read a novels and nothing really happens. This book has both and that is what makes a great book for me.
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ekny
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In love with a prisoner
I'm happy to come out as the one who recommended Some Girls to Abzug, the writing's gorgeous. The irony, or so it seems to me, is that the author's likely straight; given how much lesbian pulp is published with its canned, predictable developments, I find it very interesting (and rather curious) that to get something fresh--the book's shamelessly romantic w/o being sentimental, the prose is incredibly clean & crisp--you have to find a straight writer. Go figure. (Sadly, Some Girls is out of print, so you'd have to hunt it down online or luck out & find it at a used bookstore.)

Classics, if you're new to lesbian literature, include the obvious: Rubyfruit (which I never cared for but is kind of required reading); Desert of the Heart, by Jane Rule, which is to my mind one of the best, most complex & literary books abt lesbian characters from the last century (it has nothing in common with the movie--thankfully, imo), & Patience & Sarah (Isabelle Miller), a nice historical piece. Sorry, but Oranges left me cold.

I read a lot of Y/A (young adult) lesbian/gay fiction (well, a lot of what's out there, which isn't much): most is pretty mediocre, but Empress of the World, by Sarah Ryan, is very tight, very well-written & characterized, & up front without being melodramatic about presenting the trials around sexuality of its young protagonists. She's finally got a sequel due out spring of next year, which I'm looking forward to. I also really enjoyed Sugar Rush (the novel): I understand the author's fairly unlikeable & seems given to mouthy self-promotion; fortunely I knew nothing of her when I read it, so had no biases, & though the ending's a bit OTT, think the writing & characterizations are both believable & consistent. It's also genuinely witty, although some of the slang may be a challenge for US readers (though not ones from this board, I hasten to add!)

For pure pulp, the 'classic' there is Katherine Forest's Curious Wine. It's basically a straight (em, as it were) wanking book for those inclined to vanilla (or 'beach read' if you want to be polite about it), but competently done, although the setting (80's/California-type women) dates it pretty seriously.

In science-fiction land, Nicola Griffith is a terrific writer; far & away her best is Slow River, a densely-plotted book with ecological themes abt water purification & one particular corporate family & their foibles. It might be a bit technical for some readers but the unapologetically lesbian narrator & her journey are deeply sympathetic, definitely worth the effort. Her other stuff's just as well-written but grimmer & more in a noir tradition.

I've felt free to avoid The Well of Lonliness my entire life. Who needs it? So there.

And I couldn't agree more about Sarah Waters, she's gifted beyond the call of duty, & Fingersmith is as good a novel of its type as it's possible to imagine: I find it impossible to imagine anyone else writing it, much less doing it better.

Rebecca Brown is an American lesbian author who's not only not for everyone but barely for anyone: her stuff is unbelievably grim but the writing's always excellent, she alternates between short stories & novels. Probably The Gifts of the Body, abt a lesbian caretaking a gay man w/AIDS, is as good a place to start, or at least give her a try, as any. She's a highly intelligent writer, & a very fine one; short, short, simple sentences that are like surgical knives cutting away to painful emotional truths. Again, not for everyone but I think it's important to be aware she's out there. Just not an author to read for grins & yucks.

Speaking of which, I'd also include Alison Bechdel, who has to be the only woman in history to make her living entirely from selling collections of lesbian comics. If you haven't read her Dykes to Watch Out For series... what are you waiting for? ;)
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Jules2
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Oh wow, are you both for me?
The Muppets!
Thanks Ekny,


When i get to a gay/lesbian bookstore i'll know what book to take with me!
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BadGurl
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abzug
Sep 2 2006, 09:35 AM
To start things off, of course I'll mention Sarah Waters:
Tipping the Velvet
Fingersmith
The Night Watch
(I didn't enjoy Affinity, her second novel, but it does have a women in prison theme, so it could be interesting to folks on this board)
The thing I love about Sarah Waters is that she is such a good storyteller--her novels are all real page-turners--and yet she doesn't sacrifice literary quality (ie character and thematic development, enjoyable use of language etc).


Abzug I am with you on Sarah Waters, and agree with all that is said. Tipping The Velvet was my favorite book ever. Was brilliant and as I said in the other thread that I wanted to savor it and didn't want it to end. Made me sad. I know..I am a plonker!!
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bc gal
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Agree, BGs... :)
Sarah Waters books are good reading.

Would also like to recommend "A Village Affair", by JoAnna Trollope
(yes, she is a descendant of the novelist Anthony Trollope)

This book is a touching story of a middle-aged woman, Alice, who is coming to terms with her own sexuality and the sacrifices and choices she makes to appease her "village" society. Trollope's books are universal in acknowledging we all have free will to choose, but that we must then bear the responsibilities/consequences of those choices.

The last few pages will have you crying/cheering for Alice as she makes the hardest decision of her life...

Check it out...

btw- it's also been made into a movie..haven't seen it

"Save the Earth... it's the only planet with chocolate!!!!"
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abzug
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ekny
Sep 2 2006, 01:07 PM
The irony, or so it seems to me, is that the author's likely straight; given how much lesbian pulp is published with its canned, predictable developments, I find it very interesting (and rather curious) that to get something fresh--the book's shamelessly romantic w/o being sentimental, the prose is incredibly clean & crisp--you have to find a straight writer. Go figure.

As was probably obvious to everyone, Alan Warner is also not a lesbian. :) But I agree it's surprising and intriguing that some of the best writing about lesbians should come from writers who aren't actually lesbians. Of course, gay writers write convincing straight characters ALL the time (if they didn't, every character in a Broadway musical would be gay). Part of me wonders whether lesbian writers have a few obstacles in writing truly creative fiction with lesbian themes, because I would suspect they feel some political-type obligation to represent lesbians in a certain way, or to specifically NOT represent lesbians in a certain way. And that would be somewhat limiting to creativity. Of course, sometimes lesbian writers' desire to increase lesbian visibility comes out very well (eg Bad Girls series 1-3, Sarah Waters' writing etc).
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Jules2
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Oh wow, are you both for me?
The Muppets!
Perhaps it has to do with sterotyping and that lesbian writers try to avoid that at all cost.

I don't know. For me, the way a story is told is very important. Whether it is easy to read, the way setting are discribed. I love a book when i can really get lost in it. When i envision the surrounding, have gotten to know the characters and feel what they are feeling.

If i do get lost in a book, it doesn't matter to me if the writer is gay or straight. If he/she writes a very good lesbian book, i'll just essume they did great research on it.


Having said that, i do think it helped a lot to have gay people working on a show with gay characters. I think they will try to keep the person more real. (and not have a character go threw the motions and then turns straight again)
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ekny
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bc gal
Sep 2 2006, 06:26 PM
btw- it's also been made into a movie..haven't seen it

At it happens I just saw A Village Affair just a few weeks ago, finally found a VHS copy for rental--it was a made-for-UK-tv movie & hasn't been released on DVD. Pretty good overall, though I found the pentultimate scenes overwrought & very old-school (dated) in their treatment of lesbian angst. But the lead, Sophie Ward, was just right, very skillful, low-key performance, very watchable, I'd never seen her in anything before--and there's a lot of irony built in; she was the 'face' of Vogue in the 80s, & came out 2 years after this aired--is now married to her gf (a Korean-American writer). Ward has 2 kids from her previous marriage. It was a fairly big splash when she went to some star-studded event with her girlfriend, I think this was around 1996; the press went so nuts the whole thing upstaged Madonna, who was headlining. At the time, Ward was certainly the most prominent woman in the UK to come out by a long shot.

BBC Woman's Hour had an interview w/her in 2004, she was doing something on stage at the time.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2004_12_thu_02.shtml

Re lesbian/straight authors doing lesbian stories, I think part of the problem may be most lesbian writers assume they are writing genre stories (romances) for a lesbian audience, & thus basically try to just follow preexisting forms rather than do anything on their own.
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badgirlnuts
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Hi there, Just like to mention that Sophie Ward plays a country GP in Heartbeat the long running TV drama about a village bobby.
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ekny
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In love with a prisoner
Thanks, BGN, good to know! :)

Oh, it just occured to me, Jeanna & I were talking about it in another thread but w/o the Search feature, damn if I can find it... anyway, Joanna Russ's Extra(ordinary) People is a terrific collection of sci-fi stories. Not all are lesbian, although the collection does include one of the best short stories about genderfuck I've ever read. Anyway, it's also out of print but worth hunting down, esp if you're into speculative fiction, as they call the more high-brow end of the genre in bookselling land.


ETA: Abzug, if you're into lesbian Judaica & can find Judith Katz's Running Fiercely Towards a High Thin Sound (if I'm remembering the rather longish title correctly), it's out of print, worked pretty well if I recall: sort of Jewish magical realism. --e
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coolbyrne
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Sorry, but Oranges left me cold.


If you're referring to the Jeanette Winterson novel, ekny, I totally agree. Well written, to be sure, but... cold. That's exactly the right word. Perhaps it's because it is her first novel and she was just getting her feet under her, I don't know, but it lacks the emotional pull of her later novels. I think immediately of more emotionally lingering books she has written- "The Passion", for instance.

Love, they say, enslaves and passion is a demon and many have been lost for love. I know this is true, but I know too that without love we grope the tunnels of our lives and never see the sun. When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself.

Or the haunting, "Written on the Body". While the narrator is not gender-specified, I've always, always read it as female. I cannot recommend this book more.

This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

(I could have found a hundred quotes to use from that book, because the book itself is one long lyrical dream to read.)


Quote:
 
Speaking of which, I'd also include Alison Bechdel, who has to be the only woman in history to make her living entirely from selling collections of lesbian comics. If you haven't read her Dykes to Watch Out For series... what are you waiting for?


I would also recommend the newly released, Fun Home which is a memoir of her life growing up, finding out her father was gay and dealing with that (and much more) after he dies. Great stuff. (Just to reiterate what ekny has said, it IS in comic book form, and this one in particular is collected in a large hard cover book.)


-coolbyrne


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bluesycat
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I love to hear folks recommending Some Girls, EKNY, because I've been doing that for a long time. I love that book. The settings are captured so well (New Mexico and NYC) and with the healthy doses of angst, sexual tension, and identity unraveling, it is a great read. I have wondered to myself that things seem to work out almost too well for our main character. She moves to NYC totally unprepared and lands a great job (eventually), makes friends and falls for her exotic neighbor (and gets her). What do you think?
A couple others I'd recommend that I haven't seen mentioned yet are below. Not sure if the authors are lesbians, maybe some of you all would know:

Alma Rose by Edith Forbes - an involving story of a small town girl who is content with her life on her own living with her father until a vibrant truck driver stops into her store to buy some tampons. Once again I think the author does a wonderful job of grounding the story in a place I can easily picture. The main character is very well written and is likely that no-nonsense woman you've known for years. Her one impetuous act is falling in love with Alma Rose.

Summit Avenue by Mary Sharratt - an immigrant girl making her way in America during the early 1900s. Excellent insight into the poverty faced by immigrants and the lack of opportunity for women. Luckily Katherine is in the right place at the right time and is hired by a wealthy widow to translate fairy tales for a book project.

The Kiss by Linda Cullen - Two straight irish women who are best friends since primary school, suddenly find themselves together. Not sure if this is the best written book, but the transition of their friendship into a love affair is very affecting and intriguing. The author doesn't spend a lot of discussion on how the women label themselves, and the characters themselves avoid that conversation until late in the story. Joanna and Helen love each other, but will it be enough for them to try a real relationship?

Water in a Broken Glass by Odessa Rose - An African American artist falls for a book shop owner but tries to deny her lesbianism. Interesting look at how an artist works and feels more homophobia coming from her culture which nearly causes her to have a mental breakdown. The best friend is a great character in this book because she is a psychologist and offers her advice like, "life is too short for denials and too damn long for regrets"

Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg - Very evocative and sensual story of a college woman falling in love for the first time with her TA. Perfectly captures the intensity of that first love.

I think these actually could loosely (maybe not so loosely) be considered coming out stories since most of them are about women recognizing and following their new feelings for other women. Then when I was thinking that was bad, that we are all tired of those types of stories, I remembered I am on this board, so I figured we all obviously do like those stories. :)
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abzug
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ekny
Sep 9 2006, 02:26 PM
ETA: Abzug, if you're into lesbian Judaica & can find Judith Katz's Running Fiercely Towards a High Thin Sound (if I'm remembering the rather longish title correctly), it's out of print, worked pretty well if I recall: sort of Jewish magical realism. --e

Thanks for the suggestion. It sounds very good. I have no idea how I missed this one, given some of the Jewish lesbian drek I have stooped to reading.

bluesycat
 
I have wondered to myself that things seem to work out almost too well for our main character. She moves to NYC totally unprepared and lands a great job (eventually), makes friends and falls for her exotic neighbor (and gets her). What do you think?

What are you talking about? That's exactly what life in New York City is like! Well, except the getting-a-great-job-without-any-experience part. Oh, and the falling-in-love-with-your-neighbor part. Heck, even the talking-to-your-neighbor part seems a wee bit far-fetched.

(Ever heard that song by Kander & Ebb called "Ring Them Bells"? It's about a Manhattan woman who travels all around the world to find true love, and winds up falling in love with a man she meets in Dubrovnik, and it turns out he's her next door neighbor who she'd never met.)

bluesycat
 
Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg - Very evocative and sensual story of a college woman falling in love for the first time with her TA. Perfectly captures the intensity of that first love.

I loved this one, especially the "New Haven" setting (not that the author ever names it, but that's where it is), because my sister went to Yale, so I recognized so many of the locations in the novel. A quick read, but really lovely writing, characters and relationships which felt true and interesting.

Thanks for the other reccomendations, bluesycat--I hadn't heard of any of them, so I am glad to have a few more to add to my list of books to read!
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ekny
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bluesycat
Sep 10 2006, 02:14 AM
I love to hear folks recommending Some Girls, EKNY, because I've been doing that for a long time.  I love that book.  The settings are captured so well (New Mexico and NYC) and with the healthy doses of angst, sexual tension, and identity unraveling, it is a great read.  I have wondered to myself that things seem to work out almost too well for our main character.  She moves to NYC totally unprepared and lands a great job (eventually), makes friends and falls for her exotic neighbor (and gets her).  What do you think?

Hiya, delighted to hear I'm not the only person out here who adores this book & still recommends it to people, it wasn't marketed as lesbian & completely fell through the cracks, I think. She hasn't done anything since; I read her first novel, meh; definitely a first novel & not nearly as strong. Also totally straight. (I didn't care that much abt the main char's issues.)

As for your questions, not sure: I don't think that way about books, I realize; if the writing's good enough I don't question some of the basic premises unless something's really off (for ex, I have trouble with the penultimate scene in Sugar Rush, the book, it's ott & I'm not sure it's right for the plot, or that something a little different wouldn't have served as well). The whole affair in Some Girls is unlikely if you want to look at it that way, perhaps; for me, that's kind of the point. As for landing a good job (it's not a great one--she just has a great boss), some people do get lucky: I think the idea is there's something so open and fresh about Claire that she kind of attracts a certain type of individual, she's not the kind of character people run around trying to do bad stuff to, you know?

I think the novel is hugely ambitious: here McCloy's taking one of the oldest stories in the book, small town girl goes to big city (the biggest, in a certain way, at least according to its own mythos) and did a tremendous job telling in some ways a very ordinary story--but making it wholly fresh. I couldn't ask for more, or different from this book, another mark to me of its beautiful construction; scenes emerge natively from each other, small things echo together from different parts, it makes emotional sense. And finally--again, for me it's the language, it's both clean and lush. And honest. Her first novel was titled Velocity, and that's part of her achievement here, the book's literally compelling, the language itself moves you forward even as you long to linger over it, so there's this dynamic tension happening in you, the reader, at the same time as, along with the characters.


Abzug, let me know if you find/read a copy of the Katz book, curious to know what you think of it! I'll try to pull up others I know from my brain, they're probably knocking around in there somewhere.

ETA: Woops. It was actually her other book, The Escape Artist, that moves more strongly into magical realism territory. Mea culpa. Running Fiercely feels more naturalistic (sort of), probably more autobiographical. They're not perfect, a little slow in spots, but both definitely worth reading given your interests. :)
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