Other Girls - Softcover

Ayres, Diane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0758201125 ISBN 13: 9780758201126

Publisher: Kensington, 2003

Synopsis

Arriving at stately Willard College, English major Elizabeth Breedlove finds herself immersed in world of academic rivalry, sexual secrets, and life-affirming revelations when she becomes enamored with Pip, a quick-witted and sharp-tongued girl who resides in an intricate world of Sapphic passion. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

For many years, Diane Ayres was an instructor at the annual Young Writer's Conference at Penn, sponsored by the Discovery Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a former contributing editor at Pittsburgh Magazine and a graduate of Chatham College. This is Diane Ayres debut novel. She lives in Philadelphia.

From Publishers Weekly:

In Ayres's debut novel, gorgeous Elizabeth Breedlove, a first-year student in the class of 1978 at Willard College for Women, is a tough girl with a soft center. Upperclasswoman Pip Collier, fresh from an affair with her African-American feminist professor and hot and heavy with her androgynous roommate, Dusie Hertz who is Elizabeth's official "Big Sister" becomes fascinated by Elizabeth, much to Dusie's dismay. Elizabeth, a reformed "man-eater," responds in kind, and their love begins with a "bodice-ripping ban-the-book kind of lesbian lust." Painting a picture of the women's college as a breeding ground for lesbian sex and failing to chronicle the emotional challenges Elizabeth might experience in her journey toward self-discovery, the author becomes sidetracked by stereotypes and clich‚s: there's the predatory professor, the Marine who rapes a lesbian to teach her a lesson, the lesbian who becomes a model to shack up with other lesbian models, the steamy backrooms in gay clubs, etc. In page after page of the Sturm und Drang involved in female friendships and love affairs, Ayres puts her spunky, searching characters through so many relationship configurations and emotional roller coasters that the happily-ever-after ending is an anticlimax. The two female characters with the greatest chance of finding genuine happiness with each other part company and marry men, and Ayres has her characters jumping through too many unnecessary hoops to find true love.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kensington
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0758201125
• ISBN 13: 9780758201126
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416