Part 6 (2/2)

_The Shame_, 1959, (m). No masterpiece but an interesting story about a man spending a week with his dead Army friend's wife and recalling his long relations.h.i.+p with the dead man; over the week he slowly comes to acknowledge, and come to terms with the fact that their relations.h.i.+p had had overtones of h.o.m.os.e.xuality.

HITT, ORRIE. _Girl's Dormitory._ Beacon pbo 1958 scv.

_Trapped._ Beacon pbo 1954. scv.

_Wayward Girl._ Beacon pbo 1960 scv.

HOLK, AGNETE. _The Straggler._ (Trans, from the Danish by Anthony Hinton). London, Arco Pub. 1954, pbr tct.

_Strange Friends_, Pyramid Books 1955, very slightly abridged.

Boyish Scandinavian Vita adopts a ”little sister” but is quite unaware of the nature of her attraction to Hilda. In her late teens Hilda, stirred but unsatisfied by this attachment, makes an unwise marriage, and Vita undergoes a period of rootless drifting, a brief affair ending in separation, and finally makes a permanent arrangement with Hilda, whose unsuccessful marriage ended in divorce. Valuable for a portrait of European gay life, very unlike the American.

HOLLIDAY, DON. _The Wild Night._ Nightstand Books 1960 (no publisher's address listed). Composite novel of six lives which converge on New Year's Eve in a cheap Greenwich Village strip joint. ”One of those unexpectedly good stories one finds among the floods of paperback trash.” One of the six characters is a lesbian.

HOLMES, (JOHN) CLELLON. _Go._ Scribner 1952, pbr Ace Books 1958, (m).

_The Horn._ Random House 1953, Crest pbr 1958, (m).

HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. _Elsie Venner._ Burt, 1859; many editions, a cla.s.sic novel of a very strange girl, psychologically akin to poisonous snakes. In the course of this novel a curious and intense relations.h.i.+p develops between Elsie and a young schoolmistress named Helen; a compulsive domination, attraction and revulsion. One might suspect Dr. Holmes, whose medical writings and observations place him far ahead of his era psychologically, of genteelly camouflaging a portrait of variance, 100 years ago, by making the girl a creature of macabre fantasy.

+ HORNBLOW, LEONORA. _The Love Seekers._ Random 1957, pbr Signet 1958. The heroine's hesitation between marriage with a steady and reliable man, and insecure excitement with a hoodlum, is resolved when her affairs are interrupted by concern for the daughter of a friend; the young lesbian, Mab, whose life has become entangled with some very shady characters.

+ HULL, HELEN R. ”The Fire” ss in Century Magazine, Nov 1917; Excellent story of a small-town girl's love for a middle-aged spinster who awakens her to a world beyond her small one.

”With One Coin for Fee”, novelette in _Experiment_, Coward-McCann 1938, 1939, 1940. An introspective spinster and a lifelong friend, trapped in a New England house during the 1939 hurricane; subtle but good.

_The Quest._ Macmillan, 1922. An over-emotional girl, seeking escape from home tensions, develops crushes on a cla.s.smate and on a teacher: her mother's over-reaction turns the girl against variant attachments just as her unhappy home turned her against marriage.

_The Labyrinth._ Macmillan, 1923. Variant attachments, among others, in a novel of a woman unhappy in domesticity and trying to find creative outlets.

_Landfall._ N. Y. Coward-McCann 1953. In a brittle and sarcastic novel of a brittle and sarcastic woman, the heroine, a capable businesswoman, alternately repulses and warms toward her adoring secretary-though she secretly scorns the girl's devotion, she feels it would be a nuisance to break in a new secretary, so wishes to keep her captivated.

HUNEKER, JAMES. _Painted Veils._ Liveright 1920 (still in print); pbr Avon 1928. Unpleasant novel of the theatrical and literary world of that day; the heroine, Easter, (an opera singer) has a mannish satellite.

HURST, FANNIE. _The Lonely Parade._ N. Y. Harper 1942. Very minor mention of lesbians in a novel of lonely women at hotels.

+ HUTCHINS, MAUDE PHELPS McVEIGH. _A Diary of Love._ New Directions, 1950, pbr Pyramid 1952, 1960. Weird stuff, written with a detachment and delicacy reminiscent of the Colette novels.

A teen-age girl, Noel, goes through a bizarre series of experiences in a strange household where her grandfather seduces his (male) music pupils and a nymphomanic, neurotic housemaid, Freida, successively seduces everyone from Grandpa down to Noel.

Beautifully done.

_Georgiana._ New Directions, 1948. The second section of a sensitive, well-written novel is laid in a girl's school; there are three important variant attachments, and as a result one of Georgiana's cla.s.smates is expelled. In later life Georgiana blames her failure to find happiness on a ”lesbian complex.”

_My Hero._ New Directions, 1953, (m).

ILTON, PAUL. _The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah._ pbo, Signet, 1956, 1957, (m). Historical, Biblical setting.

JACKSON, CHARLES. _The Fall of Valor._ Rinehart & Co, 1946, pbr Signet, 1950, (m).

_The Lost Weekend._ Farrar & Rinehart 1944, pbr Berkley 1955 and others.

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