Part 2 (1/2)

Esoteric, melancholy, beautifully written short stories, of which two are overtly lesbian in content.

BERTIN, SYLVIA. _The Last Innocence._ (Trans. by Marjorie Dean). N Y McGraw Hill, 1955. Story of Paula, a member of a French provincial family. ”The refres.h.i.+ng thing is that Paula is treated as a matter of course ... that she wears trousers, hates men, etc.

is presented with no more excuse or explanation than the individual foibles of the rest of the family.”

BESTER, ALFRED. _Who He?_ N. Y., Doubleday 1955, pbr Berkley 1956, (m) tct. _The Rat Race_. Tense, tightly plotted novel of split personality. The hero's housemate is a deeply sublimated h.o.m.os.e.xual who cracks up when Jake gets a girl; this episode snaps the high pitch of tightrope tension and precipitates the denouement of the novel. Excellent.

BISHOP, LEONARD. _Creep Into thy Narrow Bed._ Dial 1954, pbr Pyramid 1956. Story of a vicious abortion racket; woven into the story is the sympathetically treated story of a young lesbian's self-realization. Very good of kind.

BODIN, PAUL. _All Woman's Flesh_ (trans. from the French of Le Voyage Sentimental, by Lowell Bair.) pbo Berkley 1957.

_The Sign of Eros_ (trans. from French) Putnam 1953, pbr Berkley 1955.

Both of these involve a man's attachment to two women who have some h.o.m.os.e.xual contact, but the emphasis is heteros.e.xual, rather than lesbian.

BOLTON, ISABEL. ”Ruth and Irma”, ss in The New Yorker, Jan 26, 1947; also in Donald Webster Cory's _21 Variations on a Theme_.

BOTTOME, PHYLLIS. _Jane._ Vanguard, 1957. Story of a street urchin, including lesbian episodes in a girl's reformatory.

BOURDET, eDOUARD. _The Captive._ N. Y., Brentano's 1926. Drama based on a triangle-man, wife, and a woman who is winning the affections of the latter.

BOURJAILY, VANCE. _The End of My Life._ Scribner's 1947, pbr Bantam 1952, (m).

_The Violated._ Dial 1958, pbr Bantam 1959, (m).

_The Hound of Earth._ Scribner 1955, pbr Permabooks, 1956, (m).

Also includes a minor, and unsympathetic lesbian character.

BOWEN, ELIZABETH. _The Hotel._ N. Y. Dial 1928. A shy young girl sent to catch a husband at a fas.h.i.+onable hotel is, instead, captivated by a sophisticated woman.

BOWLES, JANE. _Two Serious Ladies._ N. Y. Knopf, 1943. The emanc.i.p.ation of an inhibited American housewife.

BOYLE, KAY. ”The Bridegroom's Body” ss in _The Crazy Hunter_, Harcourt 1938, 1940. Also qpb, Beacon Press, 1958, (m).

_Gentlemen, I Address you Privately._ NY, Smith 1933, (m).

_Monday Night._ N. Y. Harcourt 1938, hcr New Directions, n.d. Brief account of a lesbian affair through the eyes of a child.

BRADLEY, MARION Z. ”Centaurus Changeling” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April, 1954. Science Fiction novel; intensely emotional relations.h.i.+p between three wives of alien bureaucrat leads to jealousy and tragedy when the eldest, Ca.s.siana, takes an outsider into their home and makes a favorite of her.

_The Planet Savers_, in Amazing Stories, Dec. 1958, (m). Science fiction of split personality, one equivocally h.o.m.os.e.xual.

BRAND, MAX. (pseud of Frederick Faust). _The Night Horseman._ G.P.

Putnam's Sons, 1920, hcr Dodd, Mead 1952, pbr Pocket Books 1954, (m). Unusual Western story of a strange cowboy who has an almost supernatural influence on horses and other men; his foster father mysteriously declines when he leaves, makes a miraculous recovery when he returns home. Subtle and good of its kind.

BRINIG, MYRON. _The Looking Gla.s.s Heart._ Sagamore, 1958. One lesbian episode, treated vaguely. (Minority report says that nevertheless it is so clearly and well done that the book is worth anyone's reading.)

BRITAIN, SLOAN. _The Needle._ pbo Beacon Books, 1959. Overly contrived shocker about Gina, a young girl who falls simultaneously into narcotics, lesbianism, prost.i.tution and the hands of a weird couple dabbling in incest. Evening waster, rather better than most but leaves a bitter taste.

+ _First Person, Third s.e.x._ pbo Newsstand Library 1959. Very well-written novel of Paula Harman, young schoolteacher coming to terms with her life as a lesbian through bitter experience. Don't let the lurid paperback covers and blurb scare you off, this is a NOVEL-well worth hard covers and a steal at 35.