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Women In The Shadows (2002)

Women in the Shadows (2002)

Book Info

Author
Genre
Series
Rating
3.32 of 5 Votes: 2
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ISBN
157344149X (ISBN13: 9781573441490)
Language
English
Publisher
cleis press

About book Women In The Shadows (2002)

I must admit that this is one of Bannon's - and indeed, that of any other author - most difficult books I have ever read. Sometimes... most of the time, actually... what we wish would happen just doesn't and it's not in our power to change it, and it's heartbreaking. This book illustrates this reality in painful terms.I read it first, agonized because I love these characters so much, because it's clear that Bannon loved them so much too. When I read it again a couple years later, I realized I was watching an artist destroy a beautiful canvas out of disillusionment, due to the death of a dream. Published in 1959, the lovers who came together in a clash of passion from I Am a Woman, Laura and Beebo, are clashing again, but in a different sort of passion. The reality of their times conflicts with the romantic picture of what happy ever after should be. If the passionate romantic in you cheered for Laura and Beebo in I Am a Woman, the logical experienced person in you knew that that white hot affair would never last. Laura has an affair in this book with a woman so confused and experiencing so much self-hatred that she confounds all expectation and Beebo watches in a fury of self-destruction. Only the emotional rock of Jack Mann, Laura's best friend who is also gay, is a pleasant surprise. Laura and Jack get married in a completely platonic marriage as Bannon explores the mind-boggling details of what it was like to try to live some kind of normal life in the face of so much rejection and repression.Years later, Bannon admitted that she was proud that she explored the issues in this book of interracial relationships and domestic violence. But she also admitted that she was not proud of how she portrayed Beebo Brinker, who she heaped all her unhappiness upon. But for Beebo, Bannon admitted that Beebo was strong enough to take it. She did survive and indeed grew in Bannon's later books. Reading about Bannon's life while writing the books puts them in a much clearer context, and makes the book a little bit easier to read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Bannon (I wrote it...)

This book was traumatizing. I read this book for a project I did for school about lesbian pulp novels published between 1950-1965. This book was written by the infamous Ann Bannon, a queer woman who wrote several lesbian pulp novels, most of them a part of the Beebo Brinker Chronicles. This book is the third book in the series. Despite my intense dislike of this book, it is valuable for historical analysis. However, if you are looking for a book that positively portrays lesbianism, queerness, or butch women do not look here.

Do You like book Women In The Shadows (2002)?

This was the darkest one probably out of the Beebo Brinker chronicles. A really deep sobering look into the chemistry of a disintegrating relationship, all that goes into it and all the ways one escapes such a thing. The ending was sad in its finality and its message, but quite appropriate for the time the story takes places in. Though the book tended to dive into high dramatics now and again, it was also surprisingly serious and offered much insight to the innerworkings of human mind and heart. Recommended.
—Bandit

I think this is the most controversial of Brannon's pulp novels. It has the gay guy and the lesbian marrying as the gay guy realises he no longer wants to have his heart broken but wants to have a daughter instead. It was a very dark and sad book. There was a lot of internalised homophobia, even from the characters that had been accepting of their situation. When the gay guy married he said he finally felt like "a man" because he had a wife. It was odd to see how they settled into their 50s sterotypes even though they weren't having sex and even though they were both queer. But it was also obvious that they had a strong friendship and were trying to survive together, I felt really sorry for both of them. I think the most disturbing part of this book was when Beebo was gang-raped by 4 men (fortunately happened off screen). It actually made me cry reading in the coffee shop when she told Laura how she coudn't go to the doctor, and hadn't been in 20 years, because the doctor would see that she was a girl. It was also heartbreaking that no one thought she'd be having emotional trauma afterwards, but her girlfriend was surprised when she didn't feel better after her bruises faded a couple weeks later. It was another big emotional and melodramatic tale about having relationships with people who aren't good for you, and how you end up hurting people even when you don't mean to. There was domestic violence, interracial relationships, and gay parenting. It was tragic and beautiful. For some reason these characters just seem so real to me. I have two books left by Brannon to read and I'm really looking forward to them.
—Mel

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