LAMBDA RISING BOOK REPORT - 4
Two Lesbians, a Baby, a Butter Pat & a Body
by Laura Markowitz
THE GIRLS is a refreshing change
from lesbian Amazonian Utopia novels or
depressingly realistic tales of heartache and
oppression. If you like a lighthearted tone
and suspenseful plot. THE GIRLS is a sat
isfying, enjoyable read.
Starting off a bit slowly, the plot comes
together neatly. Susan discovers that she is
bored and dissatisfied in the neanidyllic life
with Janet. The two have a small farm and
craft shop in a sleepy village of rural Eng
land. Susan is not actually certain of the
nature of her feelings. “She was going
nowhere...they were a refuge for each other,
she and Janet;...their whole life was not more
than a retreat from life. The had made a
Wendy House together, and hid in it.” Bowen
justifies Susan’s impression with prosaic
descriptions of the lovely coziness of their
life. Susan feels stifled by it. She goes off to
Greece for three weeks on a package tour to
sort things out. Meanwhile, Janet undergoes
severe bouts of jealousy and pain and winds
up becoming pregnant (inadvertantly, alth
ough not in any unpleasant way). Susan
returns, relieved to be back to their self-
created little paradise. The baby adds a new
dimension of activity to their lives and things
roll along smoothly.
Conflict arrives in the person of the
uninformed father. The closer he comes to
realizing the parentage of the child, the more
nervoua Susan becomes. “Susan's instinct
told her that society would destroy the
admirable arrangement if it could..Jtheir
familyj unit survived by being private and
self-contained." Suaan'a instincts for self-
preservation take hold. She hits him over the
head with a butter pat. "...She had not meant
to hurt him anymore than one means to hurt
a fly...One wishes only to be rid of the flies."
Stated in these terms, with no hyperbole, the
accidental murder makes perfect sense to the
reader, is really very convenient. Now life can
continue on in the same unexceptional way.
But of course, there is the body to contend
with.
The remainder of the novel describes
the cover-up and investigation. Bowen
characterizes everyone’s feelings about the
crime but he (via the girls) avoids overin
dulging in emotionality. Sprinkled in along
side the question of the murder are various
village personalities from the gossip to the
eccentric pig farmer to the semi-corrupt con
stable. Bowen balances the potentially serious
storyline with colorful descriptions of craft
fairs, flower shows, and the village itself. He
even goes so far as to tell the reader, in great
detail, the process of goat cheese making, and
birthing a baby.
While the success of THE GIRLS is in
its credibility, the weakness of the novel lies in
its failure to resolve most of the gay issues
which it raises. Janet and her mother confront
ing of their life together, is not addressed. It
is understandable; Bowen keeps to the susp
enseful theme. Everything is presented
casually. The reader can think about it if so
inclined. THE GIRLS is entertaining in some
ways just because it does not engage these
concerns.
As far as THE GIRLS is a rendering of
a lesbian relationship from a male per
spective, it is not offensive. Aside from the
stereotype he chooses (of the wholesome,
homesteading lesbians) he leaves “the girls”
their private life. Happily, there is no voyeur^
ism in these passages, although he sacrifices
any descriptions of physical loving between
them altogether. Bowen gets away without
being disagreeable because the book is not
trying to discuss lesbianism.
In fact, the women themselves don’t go
into much analysis about it. “The girls were
an old fashioned couple as the still are. They
had come together in the days when the Wom
en’s Movement was at its most militant and
many wife and mother was led into lesbianism
by having her consciousness raised, but
Susan had never heard of the Women’s Mov
ement and Janet was not sure that she
approved of what she had heard. Instead,
they fell innocently in love.” Bowen makes it
seem as if the characters in his story just
happen to be lesbians, and he is skillful in
having us believe it while confidently playing
on it throughout the plot. One tactic is his
language. The voice is recognizable. It comb
ines playful and distinctly British prose in the
style of Sayers or Wodehouse with very
untraditional subject matter. We are reas
sured and have confidence in it. Assuming the
unconventional
be commonplace is a won
one another in a bewilderingly hurtful way derful tactic for to creating
a society where gay
that never works out satisfactorily. Attemp relationships simply are accepted
and take for
ting to get through to her disappointed granted.
mother, Janet yells: “Sexual orientation,
mother, is not whom you fuck, its whom you
love” and then drives off in anger. That is the
last interaction they have. Susan’s initial Laura Markowitz, young as she is, has
doubts about her life are not trivial yet noth already lived a full life. Her scholarship won
ing comes of them. She has a lousy holiday, her a fellowship for which she lived in various
comes home, they have a baby. It’s almost too women’s spiritual communities in Europe,
neat. Of course, it isn’t so neat since her total
and the Middle East. She also took an
dependence on the relationship becomes evid Asia
aboriginal
skills course and can survive in
ent in the necessity for murder. The issue the desert life
using
aboriginal techniques. She
surrounding the women’s intimacy, the mean speaks French, Hebrew
and Sinhalese.
Tea, Sympathy & Coming of Age
by David Perry
Sarah Rossiter’s first novel is highly
evocative and mysterious, redolent of that
highly emotional autumnal memory that
seems so much a part of America’s collegiate
consciousness. THE HUMAN SEASON, Is
one of those cherished books to be read on a
rainy afternoon, bouillon at the ready. It’s
strength lies in its sheer, almost poetic
beauty and economy of its writing. It’s weak
ness in the fact that we seem to have read this
story before.
CATCHER IN THE RYE is the quin
tessential novel of the boarding school
experience. Indeed, of adolescence itself. Like
a great fulcrum, it demands balancing com
parison from all that has come before and
after. CATCHER IN THE RYE seems always
to have been. Authors diving into that vast
and oh so tempting pool of innocence lost, do
so at risk of this most tempting of Compaq
¡sons. THE HUMAN SEASON is no dif
ferent. It is no CATCHER IN THE RYE.
though it often rings of it, as well as of other
similar treatments. Although, Rossiter's lyr
ical prose is more akin to the silken ease of
Edmund White than that of Salinger” s rough
hewn reality.
Rossiter‘s hero, Peter Spaulding, is a
Holden Caulfield for the eighties. His fears,
his coubts, his sexual awakening are no dif
ferent from the eons of other boys before him.
They merely come in an age when it is no
longer taboo to speak of them. Excepting, of
course, at Dunster-as ivy covered a school as
any conceived-to where Peter was shipped off
four vpars ago by a new stepfather and care
THE HUMAN SEASON, by Sarah Rossiter (Little, Brown A Company, 276 pp. $16.951.
less mother. His father, also remarried,
"First there was Manning.
appears equally as uninterested. Peter’s sole
Then there was his wife. He
familial bond is in that of his new, chain
called her Cate. I called her
smoking stepmother, Judith.
Mrs. Manning. Mrs. Oliver
Austin Manning III. We met
Like Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Peter
Spaulding speaks to us directly. Rossiter’s
two years ago when she was
first person is cleverly handled, easily slip
twenty, and I was almost seven
ping into reverie and flashback without
teen. Yesterday she was
noticable distraction. The novel opens with
twenty-two.“
Peter in his room, pondering where to begin
Also yesterday, the reader soon learns
his tale:
through 1 Mrs. MacQuire, a befriending
Reprise
i
-
faculty wife, Cate committed suicide. No
sooner has the triangle been extablished than
it is dashed, along with Peter’s illusions. The
remainder of the novel will be Peter’s attempt
to sort out the mystery, for he is convinced
that Manning actually killed his young wife.
However, this is no murder mystery.
Nor is it the byzantine machinations of an
overly romantic juvenile. Without destroying
the story, it is safe to divulge that soon (had
you not already guessed it) we learn of Peter’s
divided loyalties. There has been a tryst with
Cate, and one assumes also a homosexual
experience with Manning. Even the "regal“
Mrs. MacQuire carries a secret; and a plot
ting school chum, Edwards, who would be in
good company with Salinger’s Stradlater,
adds complications.
In less skillful hands, these twisted
plot lines would appear lugubrious, even trite.
Howver, Rossiter handles her subject and her
prose with a steady and deft narration. "Peo
ple are like onions,“ Judith tells her stepson
Peter early on. ’’They’ve got layers. Peel one
off, there’s another underneath. The older
you get, the more there are.“
And fulfilling her own metaphor, Ros
siter peels away her story like a diaphonous
onion skin. Many times the flesh is sweet like
a vidalia, but at others, it is pungent, making
our eyes moist with the steadily increasing
pile of secrets laid bare-the incessantly revea
led truth at the core. And, it is this peeling
away by which THE HUMAN SEASON
gives the most pleasure--the simple elegance
of Rossiter's style. The anticipated den-
Continued on page 10
Books & other products reviewed or advertised in the BOOK REPORT are available at your local gay & lesbian bookstore & Lambda Rising.