| Title | : | Stranger on Lesbos |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 144 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1960 |
• Includes an Afterword on the history of pulp paperbacks
• Grier Rating: A***
Frances has been married to Bill for many years. Their son, Bob, is in high school. Frances had been left alone too often. Bill's occupation with business, his insensitivity, his indifference had drained their marriage of meaning and warmth. Yet, it never occurred to her to think of divorce – or to have an affair with another man. It was easier to shut herself off from all desire, all feeling. It was like being dead… but it was safe. Then she met Mary Baker – Bake, for short. Bake… with her dark, knowing eyes, her young body, so alive, so full of passion and hunger.
Shy Frances is drawn to Bake immediately and accepts her invitations for socializing… which leads to a certain amount of drinking and flirting. Before long, the relationship becomes much more than just a friendship – the two fall hard for each other and Frances becomes Bake’s girl. It’s not a smooth road for them, though, as Frances is married… still living at home with Bill and her son. With Bake’s encouragement, Frances regains strength as an individual and finds employment outside of the home. The independence she gains as a result of having her own money does wonders for Frances. For the first time in her life, she feels confident and courageous – strong enough, perhaps, to consider pursuing a new life for herself. Can she trust Bake's feelings for her? Will she leave Bill and her son? Can she trust Bake to stay with her if she does divorce her husband? Will our lovers fight against all odds to make their relationship survive?
About Lesbian Pulp Fiction:
In the early 1950s new sub-genres of the vintage paperback pulp novel industry emerged—science fiction, juvenile delinquent, sleaze, and lesbian fiction, for instance—that would tantalize readers with gritty, realistic and lurid stories never seen before. Mysteries, thrillers and hardboiled detective pulps were already selling quite well. Publishers had come to realize, however, that sex would sell even more copies. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they tossed away their staid and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. Before long, books with these sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers. To this day, the "good girl art" (GGA) cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.
With the birth of the lesbian-themed pulp novel, women who loved women would finally see themselves—their experiences and their lives—represented within the pages of a book. They finally had a literature they could call their own. For lesbians across the country, especially those living in small towns, these books provided a sense of community they never knew existed, a connection to women who experienced the same longings, feelings and fears as they did—the powerful knowledge that they were not alone. We are excited to make these classic lesbian pulp novels available in ebook format to new generations of readers.
Stranger on Lesbos Reviews
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Francine is trapped in a boring, 1960s marriage with a go-getter husband who drinks too much, travels too much, and who may or may not be sleeping around with prostitutes and other men's wives while out at one of the many conventions he attends. Her son is 16 and definitely doesn't need a mommy anymore, so Francine decides to go back to college and finish her degree. There, she meets Bake, a beautiful woman who falls madly in lust with Francine, and their relationship begins from there.
Bake gives Francine the love of her life, a sense of being alive that's precious, but Bake is a full-on Lesbian (note the caps), and the life of Lesbian is a tumultuous, impermanent one: no relationship lasts long, drinking is Bake's major hobby, and every woman has a "reason" for being a Lesbian. Francine loves Bake when she's sober, but Bake drunk is hard to deal with. Along the way, her husband and her son come to realize that Bake is more than Francine's "Sunday drive" friend, and the picnics they drive to aren't out in the country very often.
Francine angsts a lot throughout the book. There isn't much of a plot here, and by the end of the book the modern reader is going "Really? That's not a happily every after ending at all! I don't care what the author says."
The theme of the book is essentially: lesbians are shallow, sad people too mired in their own sinful nature to escape the grubbiness of their existence. Gay bars are the prima facie evidence for this. A lifetime with of your spouse and child, even if it feels unfulfilling at the moment, is better than any alternative because, really, it's what society supports the most, and you'll be dead someday, you may as well live within the well-worn groove of Kinder, Küche, Kirche, because everything else is harder, grubbier, shallower, and sadder, right?
This book is the motherhood statement delivered with an axe.
Saddest of all, the lesbian love scenes, the aftermaths of which consist of kind words and sweet lassitude, are all elided completely, whereas -
Originally published during the golden era of such sort of pulp novels, Stranger on Lesbos is a diamond in the ashes. A sort of book where the quality of writing elevates it above the cheesiness pulps generally presuppose. While it can be easily dismissed as a lesbian novel, it really is a character study of an unsatisfied housewife who finds herself trapped in a life she no longer wants or likes but uncertain whether to exchange it for a wilder more satisfying (to an extent) but much more uncertain one. It isn't as raunchy (for present day anyway) as the name and the title would suggest, the sex in the book is all implication and innuendo. Love on the other hand is a much more complicated beast and as Frances struggles between the two radically different worlds, she begins to weigh in the import of excitement over the comfort of stability. The lesbian community is portrayed in a fairly shocking fashion, more of what a homosexual one would be according to traditional stereotypes, all drama and temporary hook ups, promiscuity and alcoholism. That and the ending of the book almost make it seem like an anti lesbian propaganda, which is exceptionally odd considering the life of an author, a well known feminist and gay activist. But either way, it was a good interesting read, which makes one think and be ever so happy the society has made some (notably slight when pondered) progress in terms of eradicating misogyny and homophobia. Have you ever watched Mad Men (early years) and find yourself wishing for a lesbian character in the show. Well, pulp fiction to the rescue. Recommended.
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Really short novel from 1960 in which a depressed housewife has a two year long affair with an alcoholic lesbian. Kind of a period piece, but the characters--while mostly unlikable--are nonetheless vividly drawn. Really not a bad book, given the constraints of the era, and I liked it more than I expected.
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I first heard of
Valerie Taylor when I bought another book, Bunny Lake is Missing by Evelyn Piper. The edition I bought was published by The Feminist Press. I began looking for some of the other authors that they published; Dorothy Hughes - In a Lonely Place, Vera Caspary - Laura (I found this one). Anyway, I also managed to find
Stranger on Lesbos this past weekend.
Valerie Taylor was a leading light in the lesbian pulp fiction genre of the late '50s and '60s. Stranger in Lesbos was her fourth book, published initially in 1960. It's a simple story really. Frances, a 1950s housewife, finds herself in a boring marriage, ignored by her husband and stuck in a stifling suburban life. She takes a course at university, deciding to work on the degree she never finished due to her marriage. At her first class she meets Bake and an attraction develops rapidly.
Even though still married, she finds herself exploring the lesbian world, her deep attraction and love for Bake enticing her to spend more and more time with her. The book deals with her dilemma, whether to stay in her current family situation or follow her heart and leave her husband. It's a difficult story to rate, but suffice it to say that it is a thoughtful, interesting story; one of love and difficult decision - making. Taylor further explored Frances' life in some of her future books. (3 stars) -
I'm hoping that at least part of this book was written tongue-in-cheek.
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CW for this book. there is so much rape.
Stranger on Lesbos or as i will now call it "My time as a tourist" is a quick little read that spends most of it's time painting lesbians as a bunch of horrible deviants. There is no doubt throughout the last 2/3rds of this book that the bad guys are the lesbians. Furthermore there is a constant down talking of specifically butch lesbians, the femme's are considered to be kind and warm and thoughtful and literally every single butch character in this book is either a rapist or a caricature of a man painted up as a lezbro fuckboy. I honestly hit the tail end of this novel expecting the protagonist to end up with the obvious romantic choice and leave her shitty horrible life behind.
overall this book left me with a very sour taste in my mouth and felt incredibly othered. I actually felt more comfortable reading the conversion therapy sections of "the miseducation of cameron post"
Edited addition.
Returning to this the next day after a conversation with one of my customers at my job (I'm a librarian) I can see this book more as a valuable snapshot of the time. With the addition of reading lilac mines close after it I have found myself learning a lot about queer culture that I didn't know and whilst the book is uncomfortable and I do think does a lot of work in making lesbians sound evil it is and important and interesting read. -
An interesting look into the past. Main character Frances is very well-written in her yearning to be somewhere other than the box she's found herself existing in. The scenes from her childhood give an extra dimension to understanding her longing to belong and keep the security she's found for herself set against the lack of fulfillment she gets from being a mid-century "hausfrau", condemned to the brainless, mind-numbing work of laundry, dishes and keeping the men in her life fed. She has a husband who is no longer at home in his effort to make money and a son at the age where he's more interested in pursuits outside the house. Frances ends up making a new friend when she goes back to college and quickly ends up in a romance, giving her the affection she hasn't been getting for a while now.
On the surface it almost seems like a gentle condemnation of lesbians but it really gives you a look at how difficult and depressing being gay is in a world that mocks, ostracizes and criminalizes people who are different from the established norm. Legal and social controls make it extraordinarily hard to break with convention.
It also gives you all this with 1950s values so take that into account. Marital rape wasn't illegal back then so
Anyway, I like the period details and I thought Frances was pretty well-rounded. -
No rating.
I read this for the “1950’s/60’s lesbian pulp fiction” square on r/romancelandia Pride Bingo — a niche square if I’ve ever seen one!
I’m not entirely sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this. Something more titillating, perhaps.
Instead, we get this story — of infidelity, alcoholism, illegality, rape by a stranger, rape by your husband.
The love scenes with Bake were fade to black. The rape scenes were shown, but very vaguely.
More than once I found myself getting lost, particularly between chapters. Struggled to tell how much time had passed, whether we were in a flashback, where we were, etc.
No HEA. Frances remains with her husband, though per Google she finds love and independence in sequels.
I did a (quite small) bit of reading on the genre, and it seems like many of these lesbian pulps were pure fantasy written by men. Taylor — a lesbian — was pushing against that, trying to show the hard realities of an underground community.
I don’t know the intentions of this book, but the moral (a contrast to Taylor’s life of activism) seems to be that lesbians are faithless alcoholics; butches are violent; and husbands may stray or be inattentive or insist on fucking you when you don’t want to, but that’s still the stability you should strive for.
Idk. Maybe I missed something. -
It’s clear reading this book that Valerie Taylor was older, and much more of a leftist and an activist, than Ann Bannon, Marijane Meaker, or Tereska Torres when they put out their early lesbian work. There’s some art to the prose in parts, there’s believeable adult relationships, and there’s a gay scene that corresponds pretty well to the histories I’ve read. The bad things that happen are the bad things that really happened.
This features a tacked-on heterosexual ending par excellence, though I’d say it’s a much more realistic one than in Spring Fire. Being swept up by recommitment to your marriage after getting dumped by your girlfriend and having a horrible drunken night, while watching your kid get married? Believable, people are all the time getting swept up by marriage at any old wedding.
As usual, the falling in love parts are great. -
this book make me physically ill. If you have had experiences with past abusive relationships, especially as a lesbian or gay or bisexual woman/woman aligned, please do not read this book. i give it three stars as it is part of lesbian history, but I would give it fewer stars for the mental toll. I knew that, in theory, it would reiterate the stifling homophobic rhetoric of the time, but didn't think about how much of an effect it would have on me. Additionally, something I noticed while reading, was how both of the main character's relationships--with both her husband and her girlfriend--were extremely unhealthy and dipped into the waters of abusiveness. Again, a product of its time. I will generally be more cautious when investigating lesbian pulp novels in the future.
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The strong part of this for me wasn't the relationship aspect of the book, it was the story of Frances. I felt deeply for her, she was a carefully crafted person with a deep internal life that didn't always get out. Everything else I can take or leave.
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It's a better-than-bad romance novel in which a homemaker falls in love with a lesbian.
Read for historical interest only. -
This gets five stars because I was sucked in and it's so in Chicago and reading the afterword made me absolutely ecstatic to be putting some pieces of history together and i thought it was better than the girls in 3b also... And I'm definitely reading the rest of the series... And i love novels about dissatisfied women having affairs (see: madame Bovary, Anna Karenina even...)
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I don't think this was quite as good as the last book by Valerie Taylor I read. It was interesting to read about a middle aged woman instead of a college girl or teenager. But she didn't really act any differently. I think the book showed how unfulfilling simply being a middle class housewife was. How a woman who was trapped in that role had so little room for self development and growth. There was a lot of criticism of the sexism and materialism inherent in the culture.
The problem was it was so short it left so much unexplored. There was a whole two years of relationship and change that was left blank.
One thing that I thought very interesting in this book was that the main character never seemed to question her sexuality as she would in a more modern book. There was none of the "am I a lesbian?" kind of introspection going on. She just fell in love with Bake and went for it.
I think more than anything this book really highlighted how marginalised lesbians were at the time. They had to pretend to be good normal people and risked arrest for going to bars. I think the saddest moment in the book was when her son confronts her about her activities. There is no understanding or compassion. No thought that she might be gay, or in love. Just concern for his own reputation and right to love. It was one of the most selfish and horrible things I've read.
Another reviewer seemed to indicate that her husband was "long suffering and truly loved her" and she seemed to miss the part where he drank constantly, was never home, cheated on her and raped her! Hardly a perfect specimen of manhood! The ending where she decided to stay with her husband felt as forced as the ending of the previous book where the young couple decided to get married. But I liked that she acknowledged there was another woman she could have had a relationship with and despite all the bad things that had happened to her she did not regret her relationship with Bake. (Who I read every time as Blake).
I'm looking forward to the rest of the series and seeing how she develops further. -
Frances Ollenfield is a thirty-five year old housewife who, having raised her son and finding that she has little to do, returns to college to finish her degree. In her literature class, she meets Mary Baker (known as "Bake"), who introduces Frances to a world she never knew existed. She falls in love with Bake quickly, but their relationship is plagued with problems.
It's hard to rate old pulp novels from the 1950s and 60s. On the one hand, they're historically significant and (some are) even groundbreaking. On the other hand, they're filled with old stereotypes and misogyny - which, really, is just a sign of the times.
I liked this one. I could understand Frances' confusion, especially given the time period, and I could also understand the ending The author tends to skip over large blocks of time with only a sentence or two for explanation (Frances getting a job, Frances dropping out of university, etc), but the book is readable and, even fifty years later, still somewhat relatable. I'd recommend it for those who enjoy these kind of novels; they're not for everyone, and they tend to be very depressing, but they're still gems in our history. -
horrifically bad. would not even recommend to my worst enemy.
