Close Calls: New Lesbian Fiction - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312168020 ISBN 13: 9780312168025

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 1997

Synopsis

Close Calls presents twenty-one new stories that reflect the complexity and richness of lesbian life today, exploring a wide range of topics such as family, love and loss, children, violence, and sex. Susan Fox Rogers has brought together both established and new writers, including Ruthann Robson, Donna Allegra, Gwendolyn Bikis, Linda Smukler, Wickie Stamps, Anna Livia, among many others. Close Calls showcases the innovative and provocative writing that makes lesbian fiction today.

About this title

Review

Twenty years ago lesbian fiction thrived in a number of independently produced, alternative literary journals. Many of those journals have since folded, leaving fewer places for short fiction to appear. Susan Fox Rogers's Close Calls: New Lesbian Fiction has remedied this situation to a large degree. Short stories from established writers such as Ruthann Robson and Anna Livia and newcomers Wickie Stamps and Rebecca Lavine range from first love to murderous rage, from deconstructed fairy tale to postmodern speculative fiction. While all of the stories emerge from a lesbian experience, they are as varied as the individuals who wrote them.

From Kirkus Reviews

Rogers (Solo, 1996, etc.) demonstrates again her editorial skills with these 21 previously unpublished lesbian stories arranged mainly--we're told--according to their narrative experimentation. But just how experimental these tales really are is another question--most of them simply adopt traditional storytelling modes as a means for narrating slightly extraordinary events and experiences. Ruthann Robson, in ``Choices,'' does use a tricky structure to tell three stories at the same time, all about degrees of suffering. Jeanne Winer's ``The Trip We Took Last February,'' on the other hand, features some lesbian heroics as a visit to Mexico leads to adventure for a woman who fears taking risks. ``Mainstreet,'' Linda Smukler's stunning, almost unpunctuated analysis of one butch dyke's affection for barbers, is the collection's standout, but ``Close Calls,'' Wickie Stamps's piece about a dangerous flirtation between a ``Birkenstock'' lesbian and the imprisoned murderer she's drawn to, pushes the fictional envelop. In ``Me and Cleo,'' Gwendolyn Bikis provides, with her portrait of New York City homegirls, the kind of verbal electricity the rest of the collection lacks. Z‚lie Pollon's ``Mykonos,'' a brief, jagged story, takes on the issue of lesbian rape, while Kathryn Kingsbury, in ``Wicked Stepsisters,'' delivers an updated retelling of the Cinderella legend from the perspective of a smitten stepsister. Desire and its consequences among nature buffs are nicely handled by Karen Cook in ``Birding in Utah,'' and Rhomylly B. Forbes's ``When You Wish Upon the Moon'' actually casts an aspect of nature as a character. The married or heterosexual woman in love with another woman is a recurrent issue well presented in Emily Fox's ``The House of My Child.'' ``Wild Parrots Squalling Somewhere'' is Sharon Lim-Hing's exotic take on love in the wilds, while nutty postmodern narration is covered by Anna Livia in ``Lightning Dances Over the Prairie Like Lust at a Nightclub.'' Not all hits, then, but still a strong new survey of the increasingly lively scene of lesbian short fiction. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0312168020
• ISBN 13: 9780312168025
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Rogers Susan Fox