Part 3 (1/2)
CHRISTIE, AGATHA. _A Murder is Announced._ Dodd, Mead 1950, fco.
Suspects include a pair of problematical lesbians.
CLARK, DORENE. _The Exotic Affair._ Magnet Books, 1959, scv. ”I really think this one should be Maggot Books,” wrote my reviewer.
”One of those fastmoving sloppy jobs where two men and two women on an exotic cruise complete with mis-spelled and misapplied foreign phrases spend most of their time trying all of the printable and some of the unprintable variations on an old old theme. All s.e.x and no sentiment makes Jack and Jill sickening (and the reviewer sick) or, for that matter, Jack and Jack or Jill and Jill.”
+ CLAYTON, JOHN. _Dew in April._ Kendall & Sharpe, 1935. Romance of the Middle Ages, laid in the Convent of St. Lazarus of the b.u.t.terflies. Dolores, a homeless vagabond, is given shelter by Mother Leonor, a mystic, repressed, white-hot and deeply tender woman whose pa.s.sionate emotional attachments to her young novices are never explicit but pervade the entire book. Much of the story is concerned with a subtle, sweet and innocently sensual blossoming of adolescent emotions into h.o.m.o-erotic form under the pressures of convent life; the interplay of delicate love relations.h.i.+ps between Dolores, Mother Leonor, and the young novices Dezirada and Clarisse, and their fluctuation between despair, self-sacrifice and compa.s.sionate love when Dolores finds a knightly lover, Pedro, is probably unmatched in studies of feminine variance.
_Gold of Toulouse._ Kendall & Sharpe, 1935. Sequel to _Dew in April_, but laid chronologically six or seven years earlier.
Though mostly concerned with the adventures of Don Marcos, the Spanish knight, it also tells the story of Leonor, and shows the beginning of her relations.h.i.+p with Dezirada.
CLIFTON, BUD. _Muscle Boy._ pbo Ace Books, 1958, (m). Teen-age athlete inveigled into posing for dirty pictures. Good evening waster.
COLE, JERRY. _Secrets of a Society Doctor._ Greenberg, 1935. pbr Universal Publis.h.i.+ng & Distributing, ca. 1953, (m).
+ COLEMAN, LONNIE. _s.h.i.+p's Company._ Little, Brown & Co, 1955, pbr Dell, 1957. Collection of short stories, of which two are h.o.m.os.e.xual.
_Sam._ David McKay, 1959, pbr Pyramid, 1960, (m). Major, excellent, important. Don't waste time reading reviews, just go out and buy it.
COLETTE, SIDONIE-GABRIELLE. _Claudine at School._ _Claudine in Paris._ _The Indulgent Husband_ (in The Short Novels of Colette).
”Bella Vista” in _The Tender Shoot._ ”Gitanette” in _Music Hall Sidelights._
All of these are currently in print in excellent, uniform English translation of the standard ”Fleuron” edition of Colette's complete works, from Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, of recent date. The two ”Claudine” novels have had recent Avon pbr editions under the t.i.tles of _Diary of a 15 Year Old French Girl_, and _Claudine_.
Much of the work of this important French novelist was variant.
Only the most explicit are named above. The first three form a connected narrative, telling of Claudine's school crushes, her friends.h.i.+p with a male-h.o.m.os.e.xual cousin, and her ”indulgent husband” who connives at her lesbian affair with a woman friend, in order to enjoy it secondhand. ”Bella Vista” tells of a vacation spent at a hotel managed by two middle-aged lesbians; the narrator's fascinated interest in the couple vanishes when one of the ”ladies” turns out to be, actually, a disguised man.
CONNOLLY, CYRIL. _The Rock Pool._ Scribner 1936, hcr New Directions n.d. Very well written novel of a group of expatriates in the South of France. Nearly all are h.o.m.os.e.xuals; the story is told without comment or judgment.
CONSTANTINE, MURRAY, and Margaret Goldsmith. _Venus in Scorpio._ John Lane, 1940. Heavily fictionalized biography, (erroneously listed elsewhere as a novel) of Marie Antoinette, suggesting lesbianism in her adolescence.
+ CORY, DONALD WEBSTER. _21 Variations on a Theme._ N. Y., Greenberg 1953. The cla.s.sic anthology of short stories about h.o.m.os.e.xuals; four deal with feminine variance.
COUPEROUS, LOUIS. _The Comedians_, N. Y. Doran 1926. Variant couple in a novel of Imperial Rome.
COURAGE, JAMES. _A Way of Love._ G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1959, (m).
COWLIN, DOROTHY. _Winter Solstice._ Macmillan, 1943. A brief variant relations.h.i.+p proves beneficial to a hysterical invalid.
CRADOCK, PHYLLIS. _Gateway to Remembrance._ Andrew Dakers, London 1950. fco. Very brief mention of a lesbian couple in a sappy metaphysical novel about Lost Atlantis.
CRAIG, JONATHAN. _Case of the Village Tramp._ pbo Gold Medal 1959.
Fast, well-written mystery introduces a pair of lesbians among the suspects; _good_ entertainment.
+ CRAIGIN, ELISABETH. _Either is Love._ Harcourt, Brace, 1937, pbr Lion Books, 1952, 1956, Pyramid 1960. After the death of her husband the narrator re-reads the letters she had written him about her intense love affair with another woman. Almost unequalled treatment of a lesbian _romance_.
CREAL, MARGARET. _A Lesson in Love._ Simon & Schuster 1957. A Canadian orphan's pa.s.sion for a beautiful schoolmate ends in disillusion when the older girl, Tammy, tries to force Nicola into a distasteful affair with a boy, the better to deceive her mother about a similar affair of her own.
CROUZAT, HENRI. _The Island at the End of the World._ Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959. An ex-schoolteacher, Patrice, is marooned on a sub-Antarctic island with three nurses; Joan, a nymphomanic; Victoria, a lesbian, and Kathleen, a quite ordinary girl. Due to fortuitous circ.u.mstances, they manage to a.s.sure themselves the necessities of life, and between Robinson-Crusoe-ish struggles, embark on a round of excesses gradually diminished by the horrible deaths of Kathleen, then Victoria. Fascinating, slightly macabre.
+ CUs.h.i.+NG, MARY WATKINS. _The Rainbow Bridge._ G P Putnam's Sons, 1954. This book is included for the light it sheds on another novel in this list, Marcia Davenport's _Of Lena Geyer_, and not for the sake of any impertinent conclusions about the real people involved. Mrs. Cus.h.i.+ng served for seven years as companion and buffer against the world for the famous prima donna, Olive Fremstad, and Mme. Fremstad's reclusive, fantastically disciplined personality seems to have served, at least in part, as model for Lena Geyer. At any rate, both books become more interesting when read together.