By Richard Labonte
"Map of Ireland," by Stephanie Grant. Scribner, 208 pages, $22 hardcover.
Sixteen-year-old Ann Ahern, her freckled face a "map of Ireland," is defiantly attracted to neighborhood girls. She also has quite a crush on her French teacher, statuesque Mademoiselle Eugenie. It's a familiar premise for a coming-out story, but Grant's novel has an uncommon political and racial setting. The place is Irish Catholic South Boston, where girls who love girls are real outsiders; the time is 1974, when the city's working-class whites are protesting – sometimes rioting over – the forced busing integration of neighborhood public schools. Ann's attraction to her black Senegalese instructor, there from Paris on a teacher exchange, and eventually to one of the new black girls on her basketball team, whose presence she resents, even as young lust surfaces, is doubly trangressive as it crosses the era's sexual and racial boundaries. Ann is a typically troubled youth, prone to self-doubt, dark moods, and bouts of pyromania as she copes with the intersection of sexual desire and racial taboos. But her fierce individuality and tough-girl courage give her – and this book – an atypical edge.
"Love, West Hollywood: Reflections of Los Angeles," edited by Chris Freeman and James J. Berg. Alyson Books, 336 pages, $16.95 paper.
It wasn't hard to define the queer hearts of New Orleans and San Francisco, the focus of two previous "Love" titles, with their localized gay neighborhoods in relatively small towns. But Los Angeles? Not so simple. It's a sprawling metropolis, where West Hollywood – a tiny "gay city" surrounded by L.A. – is merely one among many queer neighborhoods. Ed Pierce honors the legacy of Rand Schrader, one of the first openly gay judges in California, in one of several essays celebrating individuals who shaped gay L.A.; Jeanne Cordova recalls how the "gai" boys who founded the gay community center in the '70s – "lesbian" was added to the name much later – resented pushy women, in one of several essays recalling gay L.A.'s pioneering activism; and Patricia Nell Warren, in one of the few essays specifically about WeHo, traces the impact of AIDS on her Boystown. Hats off to the editors of this rich, varied-voice collection from more than 30 contributors, who despite the title understood that L.A. is a place of many parts, with many hearts.
"The Great Cock Hunt," by Alex. Kensington Books, 288 pages, $17.95 paper.
"Alex," the pseudonymous author of this erotic romp, has for years posted his real-life sexual adventures on a brilliant sex blog that shares the novel's name. Sorry to say, fans of the blog may feel snookered by the book. Online, Alex writes about his ongoing hunt for hunky men and their memorable members with a spirited exuberance – and an eye for physical detail – that is uncommonly literate and insightful, as sex blogs go. In print, however, Alex (told by his publisher that he "couldn't just write about the nameless sex stuff"), has been compelled to straitjacket raunchy sexcapades with an unfortunately formulaic plot – mostly about having serial sex at a high school reunion with men he had the hots for when he was younger. The get-off potential of the serial sexual episodes is not bad – as erotic fiction goes. But the book lacks the fluid immediacy that propels the blog's rather astonishing – and presumably real-life – anonymous encounters.
"The Rapture for Big Sinners: 66+6 Things to Do Before and After the Righteous Lift Off," by Ian Philips. Reverse Rapture Books, 88 pages, $12.95 hardcover.
Ever wonder what "The Rapture" is really all about? You know – the end of the world, when everyone who has accepted Christ as Savior will ascend (self)righteously into Heaven, leaving sordid sinners, assorted un-Christians, and certainly all sodomites behind? This wicked book – at first glance, it appears to a picture book for toddlers – has the answers. Philips, a contented sodomite, deconstructs the apocalypse (which is not forecast in the Bible's Book of Revelations, despite Christian claims) with hilarious vengeance. His prose and the accompanying cartoon-style illustrations deserve a close reading, lest one miss gems like this: "Harry enjoys "Satan Has Two Mommies," by Lucifer Newman," under a sketch of Daniel Radcliffe. Or this: "Wanted to use Miky Maus here but Dizney would so sue." One chapter considers whether Catholics can be fundamental enough to save themselves; another offers words of comfort to Jewish readers (in Hebrew). Philips is a spot-on satirist and a salacious satyr with a delicious passion for blasphemy – this is one book the Christian Booksellers Association won't be endorsing.
Featured Excerpt
I knew it was a prejudicial thing to say that Blacks smelled different than Whites. I knew that it was. When Rochelle shrugged off her coat – one long arm got stuck, and she had to shrug and shrug again – her Black smell lifted off her skin and filled the car; it was a little bit smoky, a little bit scratching at the back of my throat. And bitter, like pennies. And thick, like oil. To tell the truth, it turned me off. My mouth was dry, parched. When she put her tongue inside, I thought, that's a Black tongue. Black lips. I couldn't stop thinking those thoughts.
-from "Map of Ireland," by Stephanie Grant
Footnotes
BOOKS TO WATCH OUT FOR: Queer humorist Kate Clinton's as-yet untitled essay collection, scheduled for publication by Beacon Press in early 2009, covers topics as varied as sexual hypocrisy and intelligent design, girls gone wild and boys gone to war, and families of choice and bee colony collapse… "CONVERSATIONS AND COSMOPOLITANS: How to Give Your Mother a Hangover" is Robert Rave's memoir – with his mother's voice in the mix – about how a gay man and his tolerant Mom discover, through waxing and Weight Watchers, that they have a lot in common; it's coming from St. Martin's next year… RITA MAE BROWN has signed on for three more books with Ballantine, longtime publisher of Brown's "Mrs. Murphy" mysteries, featuring a crime-solving cat. The first is "Pure Gold," a memoir about the animals (most prominently, cats and, of course, horses) who have loved and taught her over the years; the other two launch a new series, in which an investment banker with quite an ego inherits her aunt's farm and discovers (the hard way) that the qualities that made her a business success don't serve her all that well in the country.
"Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about queer literature since the mid-'70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at [email protected]."
