I really enjoyed this novel. I like comfortable domestic novels, but far too often they’re overwhelmingly straight. This was not. It’s about two families who have been friends for a very long time, growing together, and taking each other for granted. There are two couples, with one teenage child apiece. That one of the couplesRead More
Bessie reviews The Red Parts and Jane by Maggie Nelson
Nelson is a wonderful writer, whose memoir/queer theory explosion The Argonauts was probably the best book I read last year. It got me interested in checking out some of her earlier work, The Red Parts and Jane, which are very different from The Argonauts, and from each other, but both exceptional books. I wasn’t sureRead More
Bessie reviews After Delores by Sarah Schulman
Sarah Schulman is a writer and ACTUP activist. Her novel After Delores was published in 1988. It’s a mystery set in the aftermath of a breakup, with the narrator trying to understand how to exist in the world now that her lover Delores has left. She creates a vivid portrait of New York City at theRead More
Bessie reviews Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson
Gut Symmetries is a beautifully written love triangle involving two physicists and a poet. It’s a romance between science and mythology. Jove and Stella seem like an odd couple, the scientist and the poet, who knew each other since they were children and are destined to be together. Jove and Alice look like an obviousRead More