Ever since I learned to read at some ridiculously young age, I've been addicted to books. Books of almost all kinds. Fiction, certainly, some poetry and a few plays. Quite a bit of theory and non-fiction, depending on the subject. By the time I was 10 I had read all the fiction in the Cobb County library that had anything to do with horses. I was as in love with horses as I was with books, and luckily this is common enough in young girls that I never wanted for reading material (or for horses -- thanks Dad!)The first time I taught first year college English I was amazed to find that about one third of my students had never read a book. Not one single book. How incredibly sad! Of course I set about to change that over the course of the semester, but there's only so much one can do at that age. Either you're a reader by the age of twelve, I figure, or you aren't.
I have always loved fiction, but didn't discover fiction that really spoke to my experience of myself as female until several years ago, when I started reading fiction by women like Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy, Toni Morrison, and others. I'm always looking for more good women's fiction to read, so if you have any suggestions let me know!
As part of my coming out process I read every single lesbian novel in the Virginia Tech library. Every novel, every collection of short stories, and quite a few poetry and theory collections. The amazing thing was: there were SO MANY of them! In little ole Blacksburg, Virginia! I've never since seen a university library so well stocked with lesbian reading material. That's kind of sad, actually, considering that my most recent foray into an academic library was to the one at San Francisco State! It was an affirming and important experience to read that much lesbian literature, but I was always left wondering if there was more "quality" lesbian writing out there, work that is more "literary." Again, if you have recommendations, please let me know privately -- one of these days I'm going to compile all the great recommendations I've received over the years and post 'em up here.
Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice, April Sinclair
Chilly Scenes of Winter, Ann Beattie
Beggars Ride, Nancy Kress
Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
Two Girls Fat and Thin, Mary Gaitskill
The Dyke and the Dybbuk, Ellen Galford
Best American Short Stories 1997
Small World, David Lodge
Incidents Involving Warmth, Anna Livia
Relatively Norma, Anna Livia
Push, Sapphire
Love and Death & Other Disasters, Jennifer Levin
Picturing Will, Ann Beattie
Come to Me, stories by Amy Bloom
Bloom's first story totally surprised me: it's told from the perspective of a child whose mother is married and has a male lover, and the whole family is fine with the concept -- the adults anyway, as the children don't really know what's going on, until later. It was sweet and well done, but she doesn't really touch on similiar themes again in this book. One story features a heterosexual transvestite, portrayed with more realism and depth than usual, but still as a bit of a stereotype -- though I suppose that's what a transvestite *is* by definition! Bloom's "day job" is as a psychologist, so I have the suspicion that the seeds for many of her stories were planted during sessions with clients, which seems somewhat problematic. I can't imagine being both a therapist and a creative writer -- some of your clients would end up reading everything you've ever written, just to see if you "used" any of their material, and then accusing you of a breach of privacy b/c you happened to give a minor charaacter the same name as their great aunt's parakeet.
Escapes, stories by Joy Williams
Williams' stories are just plain wierd. I've always found book jacket descriptions and reviewer quotations a source of great amusement, but I find the ones on Williams' book particularly odd, as they don't seem to be talking about the same book I read! Apparently every time a critic reads a new book, she or he thinks it's the greatest thing since Jane Austen, since that's what so many of them get quoted as saying... Kinda diminishes their credibility, ya know? But I think there is something clever and insightful about Williams' stories -- they're wierd in a good way, but still, I'd love to have the chance to ask her: so what on earth made you think of writing *that*? I'd like to read more of her work, to see if the oddness is characteristic.
The Truth About Lorin Jones, Alison Lurie.
I really enjoyed Lurie's novel, although I'm going through a phase right now of preferring first-person, "right from the heart," memoir-type narratives. The story is well put-together, which gives the English teacher in me a very real sense of satisfaction -- nothing addles me more than sloppy, disorganized writing, although I have a fairly loose definition of "organized" when it comes to novels. The idea for the story works really well: the main character, Polly, has been comissioned to write a biography of Lorin Jones, a brilliant painter who never got the recognition she deserved while alive. Polly originally wanted to portray Lorin as yet another victim of the male establishment, believing that her career had been prematurely cut short by the intervention of jealous men, but in the process of researching her subject Polly discovers that Lorin was a complicated, multi-dimensional person, not the "textbook" victim of patriarchy posited by feminism. Over and over again, we see Polly set up certain expectations about the way people will behave or what they're like (starting with Lorin and branching out to most of the people she interviews), only to have those expectations crumble when she's confronted with the complexity of each person. I like that aspect of the book a lot, but I'm curious to know what lesbian-feminists at the time (it was published in 1979) thought about the treatment of lesbianism. Anyone know? Polly basically gets briefly involved with her best friend, a super-femme Laura Ashley lesbian, but in the end opts to get involved with a man -- but as stereotypical as it sounds, it's all a lot more complicated than that!! And I personally think it's handled very well, although I do wish Lurie had included just a sentence or two to suggest that not all lesbians have sex the same way.
Because They Wanted To, stories by Mary Gaitskill
Set in hip, urban environments, most of these stories deal with lesbian issues in some way or another, though most definitely *not* in any stereotypical Lesbian Literature ways. Common themes in her stories include running away from home as a teenager, panhandling, prostitution, and kinky sex. In some ways the content was a total surprise to me, because I vastly misjudged the book by its cover. The little picture of Gaitskill on the back suggests that these will be stories about the intimate struggles of the heart, drawn in fine, delicate lines. And I suppose in some ways they are, though the characters relate to their bodies, to their sexuality and to each other in ways that don't resonate for me. Deborah praised her ability to characterize the subtle shifts of thought and feeling that can happen in a person even over a short period of time, but I was struck more by how much I couldn't relate to the metaphors and images she used to do so. "Are there people who really think like this?" I found myself wondering. Of course no two people perceive the world, or the inner workings of the mind, in the same way, and most people probably think in ways I can't even begin to comprehend, but it's rare for me to experience such a marked contrast, especially in a writer I like.
Undercurrrents: A Life Beneath the Surface, Martha Manning
The memoir of a manic psychologist who suddenly finds herself in the throes of a depression so deep she can't climb out of it, and can barely function. After much inner conflict she decides to follow through with her doctor's recommendation for ECT, and it saves her life. In the beginning, she writes about keeping herself so manically busy that she doesn't have time to listen to the still, small voice of her heart, but by the end, she is a careful listener.
Dancer with Bruised Knees, Lynne McFall
This is not the sort of novel you'd expect from a professor of philosophy. The characters are both simple and complicated at the same time, and not terribly philosophical, not until the end. Although the story is moving and insightful, I think I came to this one with much higher expectations, perhaps because of the eloquent title and the haunting photograph on the book jacket. That'll teach me...
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
I'm not really a fan of the "page-turner" genre, but Donna Tartt's _The Secret History_ is one of the most well-written, literary efforts at that genre I'm ever likely to encounter. It's a huge book, but the story -- of a precocious college student who finds intellectual community at a horrible price -- is so compelling that I read it in a single day.
The Funeral Makers, Cathie Pelletier
Hilarious. Similar in concept/execution to Jane Smiley's _Moo_, which I also loved, in that the author journeys into the minds and motivations of nearly every character, alive or not, in the midst of the small community that provides the story's focus. I loved the way Smiley created complicated, contradictory people who were both selfish and giving, narrow-minded and fair, lovable and despicable -- all at the same time, as most of us are. Pelletier's novel paints a similar picture of human foibles, and contains one of the funniest highway accident scenes I've ever read.
Sights Unseen, Kaye Gibbons
This book was somewhat hard to read as it feels rather overly personal, as though we are getting a rare glimpse at a woman's mental illness without her consent. As a reader I felt like a voyeur, like the nosy neighbor who overhears too much of the "family business," though through no snooping of my own. It's a well-drawn portrait of schizophrenia, I think, at least as one woman experienced it through the eyes of her child.
Saving St. Germ, Carol Muske Dukes
It's got biochemistry, it's got physics, it's got a Theory Of Everything... all that and a heart-rending emotional drama too! It even brought real live tears to my eyes! As good an argument as was ever made for home-schooling (and, for that matter, conceiving by AI...). About a brilliant theorizing chemist and her struggle to find a place in the world for her peculiarly gifted daughter.
Prozac Highway, Persimmon Blackbridge
An over-forty lesbian performance artist who suffers from depression and finds her escape on the internet. I love it! This is one of the best accounts I've ever read of net addiction and depression, as well as urban dyke life, though you only hear about that in terms of how the narrator doesn't participate in it. I can soooo relate. Granted, the prose is not particularly lyrical or poetic, like so much depression literature, but she captures the everyday practical realities of depression right on, I think.
The Secrets of the Divine Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells
Fun to read about some more suthuhn ladies, but on the whole the story failed to move me in the way I'm sure it was "supposed" to. My reaction 1/3 through reading it was: this is too ambitious a project to be undertaken by a writer still so green. 2/3 of the way through: she gets better with practice, but she should've gone back and smoothed out the beginning. Upon finishing: the ending feels forced, like we're supposed to feel some sort of closure, but for me it was artificial. On the whole I liked the book, but probably for the "wrong" reasons (i.e., I love reading about the south from the perspective of women). I think there was some larger emotional "point" I just missed.
Not So Much the Fall, Kerry Hart
I love this title. Damn, I wish I'd thought of it first!! A little rough going at first, but the story is compelling, if sometimes hard to follow with all the switching back and forth in time. The narrator works her way into and out of bad relationships, only to return to a seemingly "good" one at the end, though I feel doubtful about its likelihood for success. I also look forward, one day, to reading a novel in which a character whose lover sleeps with another woman does *not* fly off the handle about it. Maybe even it's part of their relationship structure, that other lovers are OK and relationship does not equal possession. My little dream world...
Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, Florence King
The funniest book I've read in a long time, and so wonderfully written. Although King's southerness ala Virginia is somewhat different from my Georgian version, she captures the essence of this much misunderstood and maligned region of the country with remarkable wit and grace. Her meditations on femininity and the impossibility of the Southern Belle were especially resonant with my experience, and with my own frustrations at this all-important marker of womanhood I feel sometimes cursed to posses to the Nth degree. All sweetness and light, that's us suthuhn belles, dontchyaknow!
Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon
I'm still reading this one right now but thus far it has the makings of being one of my all-time favorite books, and by a man no less! In order to better deal with the loss of his job as an English teacher and the breakup of his marriage of some years, William decides to hop in his van and see the country. He has an amazing ability to capture the flavor and essence of the people he meets and places he visits, and his sense of humor has me laughing out loud every coupla pages. So what am I doing sitting here typing, when I should be reading!!