Theme for Diverse Instruments: stories

Jane Rule’s first collection of short stories, some of which were first published in The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States. Jane Rule is also the author of Desert of the Heart and Memory Board.

In the sensual and tender “Middle Children,” two closeted young lesbians radiate the joy of their love into the tumultuous lives around them.

In “A Television Drama,” Carolee Mitchell witnesses the capture of a wounded fugitive?and the blurring of the boundaries between reality and unreality.

Young Maly learns to contend with the games of her brother and his new friend by devising a game of her own in “My Father's House.”

In “My Country Wrong,” an American lesbian returns at Christmas time to Vietnam-era San Francisco.
In the humourous story “House,” an uninhibited, nonconformist family tries conventionality on for size.

Ruth hires Anna?but the women’s relationship encompasses far more complicated issues than Anna being Ruth’s “Housekeeper.”

In the unforgettable “In the Basement of the House”, a young woman grapples with the forces that entwine her life with a conventional-appearing husband and wife.

And in a story that ranks with the greatest ever written, lesbian Alice occupies “The Attic of the House.”
This outstanding collection, from one of the most gifted writers of our generation, deserves a permanent place on your bookshelf.

Review adapted from lesbianfunworld.com.

Jane Rule was born in New Jersey in 1931 and came to Canada in 1956, where she later taught at the University of British ­Columbia. Her first novel, Desert of the Heart (1964), in which two women fall in love in 1950s Reno, Nevada, was successful as a 1985 feature film titled Desert Hearts.

Rule emerged as one of the most respected writers in Canada with her many novels, essays, and collections of short stories, ­including Theme for Diverse Instruments (1975). She received the Canadian Authors Association best novel and best short story awards, the American Gay Academic Literature Award, the U.S. Fund for Human Dignity Award of Merit, the Canadian ­National Institute for the Blind’s Talking Book of the Year Award, and an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of British Columbia.

In 1996, Jane Rule received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an Outstanding Literary Career in British Columbia. She passed away in 2007.