Gay’s The WorD
Top-11 LESBIAN Books of 2007
- Fair Play Tove Jansson. Sort Of Books. 6.99
The writer and artist Tove Jansson (1914 2001) is best known as the creator of the Moomin Stories, which have been published in thirty-five languages. However, from 1968, she turned her attention to writing for adults. Fair Play was her last novel, written when she was seventy-five. It is about her two favourite subjects: love and work a novel about two women, lifelong partnerSeand friends. Philosophically calm and discreetly radical, this book is a beautiful jewel. Just translated.
A book about love tender, eccentric and fiercely independent. It feels a privilege to read it.’ – Ester Freud
- Darling New and Selected Poems Jackie Kay. Bloodaxe Books. 9.95
Humour. Gender. Sexuality. Sensuality. Identity. Racism. Cultural Difference. When do any of these things ever come together to equal poetry ”? When Jackie Kay’s part of the equation. A vibrant collection of new and classic poems.
Winter Heart
My love, the nights are coming now in the afternoons,
And it is nearly the time of year when everyone wonders
Where they should be and with whom;
And you are in the room
All full of heart on your face and your sleeve
Your lovely face open as the spring, in the winter
Evening with the dark coming down like a good soul song
Darling, you send me, honest you do.’
So, maybe, stoke up the fire in the living room,
And light the long candles. Hold me close
While the stars outside shiver and spell out their names
Bright aSeany love, anywhere, any time.
- Girl Meets Boy Ali Smith. Canongate. 12.99 [HB]
Girl meets boy. It’s a story as old as time. But what happened when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances? The delightful Ali Smith’s re-mix of Ovid’s most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can’t be bottled or sold. It’s about girlSeand boys, girlSeand girls, love and transformation, a story of punSeand doubles, reversalSeand revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and political, Girl Meets Boy is a myth of metamorphosis for the modern world. - A Lesbian History of Britain Love and Sex Between Women Since 1500 Rebecca Jennings. Greenwood World Publishing. 18.99 [HB]
Illustrated with a fascinating selection of images, impeccably researched and brilliantly readable. The famous legend that Queen Victoria denied the existence of lesbianism may not be true, but for hundreds of years love and sex between women in Britain has been largely downplayed or invisible. Now, for the first time, the stories of women who desired other women are told in a revealing narrative sweep of 500 years, from the cross-dressers of Tudor England to the Lesbian Avengers of twenty-first century activism. Every lesbian household should have one! - Winds of Fortune Radclyffe. Bold Strokes Books. 11.99
The new offering from the prolific Radclyffe. For Deo Camara the only winds that have ever blown her way have been cold and lonely. Despite a decade of estrangement, however, Deo can’t turn her back on the call of blood, no matter how high the price in heartache. Dr. Nita Burgoyne has her own family secrets, a past so painful she starts a new life in the hopes of leaving it behind. She has a rewarding new job and an historic sea captain’s house in need of renovation all she needs to be content. Or so she thinks until she hires Deo to do the renovations ”they have nothing in common except a shared legacy of betrayal and a deep impossible attraction ”is change a-blowing in the wind? - Two Lives Gertrude And Alice Janet Malcolm. Yale University Press. 16.99 [HB]
A beautiful edition and a fascinating portrayal of the legendary couple Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. How did the pair of elderly Jewish lesbians survive the Nazis’ Janet Malcolm asks at the beginning of this extraordinary work of literary biography. As she pursues the truth of the couple’s charmed life in a village in Vichy France, her subject becomes the larger questions of biographical truth. The two world wars Stein and Toklas lived through together are paralleled by the private war that went on between them. This war, Malcolm learns, sometimes flared into bitter combat. - Kate The Woman Who Was Katherine Hepburn William J. Mann. Faber & Faber. 9.99
On screen she played society girls, Spencer Tracy’s sidekick, lioness in winter. But the best character Katherine Hepburn ever played was Katherine Hepburn: a Connecticut Yankee, outspoken and elegant, bristling with Hollywood glitter. Kate’ never seemed less than authentic. And yet how well did we know her, really? Was there a more driven and vulnerable woman behind the image? With affection, intelligence, and a voluminous knowledge of Hollywood history, Mann shows us how Hepburn fashioned herself into an icon as durable and all-American as the Stature of Liberty. - The Art of Detection A Novel of Suspense Laurie R. King. Bantam. 4.99
Just out in paperback, this thrilling new novel sees San Francisco homicide detective Kate Martinelli cross paths with Sherlock Holmes ”or does it? Kate Martinelli has seen her fair share of peculiar things at murder scenes but never anything quite like this: an ornate Victorian sitting room straight out of a Sherlock Holmes story. Philip Gilbert was a Holmes fanatic, a leading expert with a collection of priceless memorabilia a collection some would kill for ”and perhaps someone did. - Night Vision A Jane Lawless Mystery Ellen Hart. St. Martin’s Minotaur. 9.99
Joanna Kasimir, an old friend of cult character Jane Lawless, left town years ago to make it big in Hollywood. She succeeded, but stardom had a price. Early on, Joanna met a man who quickly went from being a dalliance to a stalker. A decade has passed since she sent him to prison, but just as she has returned to Minneapolis to perform at Jane’s friend Cordelia Thron’s theatre, Joanna receives one of his ominious calling cards. A deadly game of cat and mouse, Night Vision proves to be one of Ellen Hart’s best mysteries yet. - Her Husband Was A Woman! Women’s Gender-Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture Alison Oram. Routledge. 19.99
Astonishing reports of women masquerading as men frequently appear in the mass media from the turn of the twentieth century to the 1960s. Alison Oram’s pioneering study of women’s gender-crossing explores the popular press to analyse how women’s cross-gender behaviour and same-sex desires were presented to ordinary working-clasSeand lower middle-class people. It breaks new ground in focusing on the representation of female sexualities within the broad sweep of popular culture. Documents the emergence of the notion of lesbian desire and illustrated with newspaper cuttingSeand postcards. - Spacegirl Pukes / If I Had a Hundred Mummies Children’s Book Katy Watson / Vanda Carter. Onlywomen Press. 5.99 each
When nausea grips intrepid Spacegirl on the day of a mission to the stars she is lucky to have two mummies to help her out, but soon yes everyone is going “Bleurgh!” Will there be enough buckets? Will her mission be cancelled? Will Spacegirl ever reach the stars?
If I Had a Hundred Mummies is a story about how the world works, concentrating on the special relationship between parents and children. With colourful pictures on every witty page, the young narrator flourishes some of her funniest, brightest, occasionally successful and frequently exhausting ideas. These books are wonderful for kidSeand great gifts for adults too.
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