The Bar Stories: A Novel After All - Softcover

Donnelly, Nisa

3.66

44 ratings by Goodreads

9780312037956: The Bar Stories: A Novel After All

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312037953 ISBN 13: 9780312037956

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 1989

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On a nondescript street somewhere in San Francisco sits Babe's bar, a legendary place where women who love women come to celebrate, to dry their tears, to spin dreams, and, every once in a while, to have their dreams come true.

The Bar Stories presents a panoramic view of the lesbian nation, and celebrates lesbian survival in a world more often hostile than tolerant. These stories are about women whom life hasn't been able to beat and so, grudgingly, respects. "We're respectable," Babe Daniels says, "because we survived...and we survived because we knew how to kick ass."

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From Publishers Weekly:

Subtitled A Novel After All , these polished and smartly paced stories about lesbians in love loosely revolve around Babe Daniels's bar in Oakland, Calif. Leading off is the tale of how Babe left the Roller Derby, rescued Sharon Winston and her baby Tara from a home for unwed mothers, and got them to California, where Babe began working in the bar she finally buys. The bar draws women from all over: Kate Solomon, a terminally ill, Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist, leaves her lover Crissy to drive a van across the country, searching for the lesbian nation. Fearless Faye Fletcher is a regular--an old Roller Derby queen and early lover of Babe's, now a drunken has-been, defeated by the death of her young daughter. The members of Babe's softball team, the Dykeball Losers, have their stories; Sharon, bothered by Babe's promiscuity, wonders what she wants from her relationship. Lesbians of many stripes--timid, tough, fearful, assertive--people the pages with some fairly explicit sex and a hard-to-believe buoyancy. Donnelly, billed as the lesbian Damon Runyon, writes as though she were cheerleading. But when she steers clear of sentimentality, cliche and melodrama, her stories are lively, moving and ring true.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review:

"The most gripping, authentic, and memorable tales of the great lesbian adventure I've yet read." --Judy Grahn

"A fine new writer with a literate ear and an eye for the heart of dyke life. A panoply of stories we've all lived-or wanted to..." --Lee Lynch

"These are imaginative, incandescent portraits. They suggest the range and depth and drama of lesbian lives. They convey pain and isolation. But most of all, they celebrate diversity-the beauty of eroticism, the humor and pride and strength of lesbian women." --Katherine V. Forrest, Lost Angeles Times

"The delight and surprise of The Bar Stories is that the emotional landscape is not the one we see in most contemporary lesbian novels. In the end, we want to see these women more clearly, smell them, hear them argue, and follow them out of Babe's bar. Donnelly's talent for painting thoroughly believable characters shines." --Dorothy Allison, Lamda Rising Book Report

"Nisa Donnelly is a talented and excited new author...Babe's bar provides sanctuary and the freedom of woman space for lesbians to relax and be themselves. Their stories are revealing, vivid and compelling." --Phyllis Lyon & Del Martin

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