A World Without Men by Valerie Taylor

A World Without Men Reviews

• 
  angie

  The original edition of A World Without Men leaves a lot to be desired, but the book itself is not nearly as bad as the cover would suggest. Despite the tawdriness and ambivalence of its appearance, A World Without Men is actually sleaze-free and much more positively slanted than other lesfic of its time.
  
  While plenty of despair abounds, the sadness comes from each woman's tragic past and not that they both happen to be gay. Above-average writing and some nicely tender moments keep this heads above the rest. This is often a warm love story, bleak though it may be, and not the sensationalistic stuff of its fellow 1960s counterparts.
  
  One of my favorite passages:
  
  "The world is full of unhappy people. Kate's throat ached to think of them. People who lie in bed at night, fretting about their bills and adding up the hopeless totals...people who can't love because their hearts are dried up like last year's seapods...all the women in rented rooms with their hearts running with love and nobody to give it to."
  
  Valerie Taylor wrote several other books in this genre, one of which a character from here appears (see Return to Lesbos.)
• 
  Stephy

  This Author, Valerie Taylor also wrote "Prism," a popular lesbian novel from the mid eighties, and several other books in the Lesbian Pulp Fiction genre. I read them before time began.
  
  She had been married with children until she came out, and had one son, possibly two. When I first knew her, she was a dear woman, just past sixty years of age. Her life partner of many years, lesbian Lawyer Pearl Heart, had died just before we met. I was proud to call her my dear friend for years. We visited, chatted and exchanged letters for many years.
  
  She published a book of Poetry with another lesbian poet, Jeannette Foster, author Of Sex Variant Women in Literature, a mighty overview of lesbians in literature.
  
  She was involved in, and Keynote Speaker at two Lesbian Writer's Conferences in Chicago, organized by Marie Kuda and other lesbian Writers in the Chicago Area.
  
  When she retired from her long time job at a clipping service and from her daytime editor job, she moved, First to Margretville, New York, where she lived in the small town of her dreams. Making a fresh start in life in her early sixties. She had a brief but passionate affair with a widowed straight woman, who broke her heart. She spoke of this woman but once to me, when she later quipped, "These mixed marriages never work out."
  
  She had a very bad fall on the ice that winter, and broke some bones. When she recovered, her son helped her move across the country to relocate someplace with no ice. She always had pain where she had broken bones,
  
  Tucson, Arizona was the place she chose to rebuild her life from scratch yet another time; this time permanently. She became Mother Goddess to a whole new group of young lesbians, who loved her and lovingly cared for as she aged. A couple or three women moved in to care for her for several years, until she was unable to live at home.
  
  Then she moved into a nursing home, where her friends raised money to pay for the cost of her care, and checked on her daily until her quiet death. She died surrounded by her friends, and was mourned Nationally in Lesbian and Gay Media. I, too, mourned her, and took comfort in the fact that she had a productive, full life and was beloved by all who knew her.
• 
  Sara

  Intriguing for historical reasons.
• 
  Dawn Wells

  Lesbian chic lit . Not great writing nor a good read. Kind of trashy. But an interesting book title. Low stars not because of genre just expected or hoped for something better