North America's preeminent guru of LGBT books, Richard Labonté has named his top 10 fiction and nonfiction titles of 2010. Naturally, many of the works will be familiar to you, but click through to discover the lesser-known gems that somehow didn't make the Thebes queer lit list. Anyone who pigeonholes gay fiction as all the same should study the breadth of Richard's list, which encompasses Lucy Jane Bledsoe's Antarctica, Michael Sledge's South America, as well as
Elaine Beale, Another Life Altogether, Yorkshire in the 70s
Daniel Allen Cox, Krakow Melt, Poland in 2005
Tristan Garcia, Hate: A Romance, Paris in the 80s and 90s
Lisa Gitlin, I Came Out for This? Cleveland and DC
Marshall Moore, An Ideal for Living, San Francisco
Sorry to admit I'd never heard of Lisa Gitlin's debut novel I Came Out for This? about a 47 year-old Jewish woman who comes out in Cleveland and moves to DC, but I'm going to order it after finding this bit:
"I hate Terri Rubin, the woman I’m in love with. She called and told me she’s dating a woman named Sonya. I hate this Sonya and I hate Terri and I hate myself because I was never like this in my life. Do you know what it’s like to come out when you’re in your forties, having menopausal symptoms, for God’s sake, and then fall madly in love with someone? All of a sudden you’re in adolescence for the first time. You don’t even recognize yourself. My whole adult life I was this cool, collected writer, strutting around in jeans and leather jacket, advising friends and siblings about their relationships, being a devoted daughter and a responsible professional person and a good citizen, and then one day I woke up and realized I was gay, and then this sassy woman walked into my life and I fell in love at first sight, after spending my life thinking that never really happened and only watching West Side Story because of the gangs. And now I’ve become the kind of person I used to make fun of, who becomes hysterical because her beloved tells her she’s dating some woman named Sonya who has an apothecary store in Bethesda, Maryland.
"I’m sick of being in this endless rut, I’m sick of Cleveland, and I’m thinking of moving to Washington, DC to be with Terri Rubin who I hate."
Gitlin will read in Toledo on Wednesday, December 29, at the bookstore People Called Women. Buy her book.
Wow, another one. You can tell I'm just catching up with BOT. Looks really good.
Posted by: Cynthia | December 29, 2010 at 08:01 PM
And it is really good. Just finished it and I loved it.
Posted by: Cynthia | May 06, 2011 at 03:14 PM