Complementary Colors - Softcover

Evans, Kate

3.71 out of 5 stars

59 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1946647144 ISBN 13: 9781946647146

Publisher: Coyote Creek Books, 2017

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What happens when a 31-year-old straight woman falls in love with a lesbian? It's 1993, and Gwen Sullivan is agitated. She's been married and divorced and is now living with her scientist boyfriend who loses himself in dark moods. Her job at a tutoring center and her work on the presidential campaign leave her vaguely dissatisfied. She hopes taking a night class in poetry might help. There, the allure of two lesbians takes her by surprise. This prompts her to question who she is—and who she wants to be. Soon she must make one of the most important decisions of her life.

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About the Author

Kate Evans is the author of a poetry collection (Like All We Love, Spirit/Q Press) and a book about lesbian and gay teachers (Negotiating the Self, Routledge). Her stories, poems and essays have appeared in more than 40 publications, including the North American Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Santa Monica Review,and ZYZZYVA. Her work has been nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, two Lambda Literary Award and three Pushcart Prizes. A California native, she teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University.

Review

As with her first novel, For the May Queen, Kate Evans explores not so much a coming of age story as a coming to terms story in her new novel Complementary Colors. Gwen Sullivan returns to the Bay Area after a stint teaching English in Japan. With nowhere else to go, and mostly only the clothes in her suitcase, she moves in with her boyfriend, Daniel, a genius but self-absorbed scientist who, though inviting Gwen to live with him, makes no accommodations for her presence physically or emotionally. Along with her increasingly unsatisfying relationship and a job that doesn't thrill her, Gwen decides to take a poetry class to ease her discontent; it is here that she meets Cat and Jamie, a couple of rollicking rough and tumble dykes, who are as intrigued by Gwen as she is by them. And while poetry may be the medium, a myriad of creative and sexual fires are alighted within Gwen against a backdrop of a widening void between herself and Daniel. As we follow Gwen's journey for self-awareness, we are not so much rooting for her peace as we are cheering for her to come to terms with and embrace her truest desires. Whether she is imbued with confusion or clarity, we are rallying for Gwen's appreciation of her creative and sexual self as she comes closer to realizing and living her own truth. A deftly crafted exploration of self-identity as only Kate Evans can achieve. Brava! --Cynn Chadwick, author of Cat Rising, Girls with Hammers, Babies, Bikes, and Broads, and Angels and Manners

Sophisticated and nuanced ... resplendent with the grace and wonder that accompany self-discovery. --Jayne Pupek, author of Tomato Girl and Forms of Intercession

Kate Evans has carefully, firmly, and personally contextualized the ever present dilemma of being a woman poet: millennia of misogynistic assumptions about the worth of a woman's mind and the honoring of a woman s body. Through the pages of this engaging, well-crafted novel, Evans delineates the ways in which the language of men degrades the language of women. The good news is that Evans' protagonist doesn't take it lying down. --Merry Gangemi, Woman-Stirred Radio

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