_Whisper His Sin._ Gold Medal pbo 1954, (m).
+ _The Evil Friendship._ pbo Crest 1958. Viciously condemnatory novel of two little girls of fourteen who, consequent to their lesbianish attachment, plot together and carry out "a murder club". Shuddersome, but, alas, well written. (Editorial query; why must so many of the detractors of lesbianism write such good books, while those who defend it are, all to often, of the Carol Hales "quality"?)
_The Twisted Ones._ pbo, Gold Medal 1959, (m).
PARK, JORDAN. (pseud of Cyril Kornbluth). _Valerie._ pbo, Lion, 1953, 1957. Minor lesbian episodes in a novel of witch-hunting; the episodes occur at a Witches Sabbat. Evening waster.
PARKER, DOROTHY. "Glory in the Daytime" in _After Such Pleasures_, N. Y., Viking 1934.
PATTON, MARION. _Dance on the Tortoise._ N. Y., Dial 1930.
Boarding-school novel; the heroine, repelled by the emotional friendships around her, throws herself with relief into the arms of a man.
PAVESE, CESARE. _Among Women Only._ Noonday Press, qpb 1959 ($1.75). Recommended, highly tragic, novel by a writer considered, until his untimely death, one of Italy"s best.
+ PETERS, FRITZ. _Finistere._ Farrar, Straus & Co 1951, pbr Signet 1953, (m).
+ PETRONIUS, _The Satyricon._ (the earliest known novel, written about the time of Christ; the last flush of the pagan world.) Trans. William Arrowsmith, University of Michigan Press, 1959.
This is also available in a highly expurgated Modern Library edition, n. d. Male, of course, and the Arrowsmith translation is hilarious and _very_ readable.
PEN, JOHN. _Temptation._ (trans. from the Hungarian by John Manheim,) Avon Red and Gold, 1959, (m). Fine picaresque.
PEYREFITTE, ROGER. _Special Friendships._ NY, Vanguard 1950, (m).
+ PHELPS, ROBERT. _Heroes and Orators._ N. Y., McDowell & Oblensky 1958. Fine modern novel of family relationships, containing a lesbian character described as the most real, human and sympathetic in recent years; Margot, in love with her ex-husband"s sister Elizabeth. The two women live together, but any intimate relationship between them is disclaimed.
PHILLIPS, THOMAS HAL. _The Bitterweed Path._ Rinehart 1949, pbr Avon 1954, 1959, (m).
POWELL, DAWN. _A Cage for Lovers._ Boston, Houghton Mifflin 1957.
Mannish, wealthy hypochondriac keeps her nurse-companion in virtual slavery until the younger girl breaks away and marries.
Competent novel by a popular author.
PRIEST, J. C. _Private School._ Beacon pbo 1959 scv.
PRITCHARD, JANET. _Warped Women._ Beacon pbo 1951, 1956, 1959.
Despite the lurid blurb and cover, this is a nice evening waster about an innocent young girl who goes to work for a woman"s health club which is, behind the scenes, an abortion mill run by gangsters. Fronting for the group, an attractive lesbian takes a fancy to the heroine, eventually protects her against the gangster boss at the risk of her own life. The heroine then marries a nice boy who"s been telling her all along that the place is rotten.
Suspenseful, interesting.
PROUST, MARCEL. _Remembrance of Things Past_, the great work of the well-known French h.o.m.os.e.xual author, is available in many (virtually all except rural-provincial) libraries, numerous college editions, etc. Long sections are variant, male-h.o.m.os.e.xual or lesbian; bibliography would occupy entirely too much s.p.a.ce. Try a stray volume in qpb and see if Proust is your cup of tea-he isn"t everyone"s.
PURTSCHER, NORA. _Woman Astride._ Appleton-Century, 1934. Woman spends almost her entire life in male disguise. Offbeat, variant rather than explicitly lesbian.
PYKE, RICHARD. _The Lives and Deaths of Roland Greer._ NY, Boni 1929, (m). Horrifying.
RAVEN, SIMON. _The Feathers of Death._ London, A. Blond, 1959, Simon & Schuster 1960, (m).
RAYTER, JOE (pseud. of Mary McChesney). _Asking for Trouble._ Morrow 1955, pbr Pocket Books 1959. Murder mystery. A mannish, hard-boiled lesbian plays an important part.
REHDER, JESSIE. _Remembrance Way._ G P Putnam"s Sons 1956.
Retrospective tale in which the heroine recalls a summer in girl"s camp, when she was enslaved simultaneously to a domineering director (woman) and her daughter.
REMARQUE, ERICH MARIA. _Arch of Triumph_ Appleton 1945, pbr Signet 1950, 1959.
+ RENAULT, MARY. _Promise of Love._ Morrow, 1939. Novel, in a hospital background, contains variant relationship, lightly treated.
_The Middle Mist._ Morrow, 1945. Excellent, humorous novel, featuring the boyish Leo (Leonora) who, with her friend Helen, lives on a houseboat quite happily ("It only makes sense for the surplus women to arrange themselves one way or another.") This is, beyond a doubt, the wittiest, most refreshing book on the list; the girls have problems, but they have them, and solve them, without any well-of-loneliness agonizing. The story is resolved in Leo"s gradual feminization and marriage.
_The Last of the Wine._ Pantheon, 1956 (m; Greek.).
_The King Must Die._ Pantheon 1958, pbr Pocket Books 1959. Minor male and female h.o.m.os.e.xuality in Cretan setting.
_The Charioteer._ Longmans, 1953, Pantheon hcr 1959. Male, major, femininely delicate. Virtually all of this writer"s work contains some reference, though sometimes remote and slight, to variance.
RENAULT, PAUL. _Raw Interludes._ Brookwood, 1957, scv. _No_ relation to Mary Renault; since Renault, Mary, has a double plus, the editors agree we should invent a double minus.
RICE, CRAIG. _Having Wonderful Crime._ Simon & Schuster, 1943.
Hilarious murder mystery leads into the byways and gay bars of Greenwich village.
RICHARDSON, HENRY HANDEL. _The End of a Childhood._ London, Reinemann, 1934, hcr N. Y. Norton.
_The Getting of Wisdom._ N. Y. Duffield, 1910. Both are volumes of loosely connected variant short stories.
ROLLAND, ROMAINE. _Annette and Sylvie._ Holt, 1925. The first volume of a trilogy, this deals with an intense attachment between two young (adolescent) half sisters who meet for the first time in their teens.
RONALD, JAMES. _The Angry Woman._ Lippincott 1948, Bantam pbr 1950. A businesswoman keeps a young girl reluctantly captivated until the girl commits suicide.
RONNS, EDWARD. _The State Department Murders._ pbo, Gold Medal 1952, (m) fco.
ROSMANITH, OLGA. _Unholy Flame._ pbo Gold Medal 1952, (m) fco. (But I like this personally very much. A modern Svengali.)
+ ROSS, WALTER. _The Immortal._ Simon & Schuster 1958, Pocket Books Cardinal Edition 1959, (m).
ROYDE-SMITH, NAOMI. _The Tortoisesh.e.l.l Cat._ Boni & Liveright 1925. An unworldly girl"s capture by a predatory lesbian.
_The Island._ Harper, 1930. Sad, tense book about an ugly, unhappy girl nicknamed "Goosey" and a clinging cousin who will neither love her nor let her go.
RUARK, ROBERT. _Something of Value._ Doubleday 1955, pbr Pocket Books 1958. Very minor.
RYAN, MARK. _Twisted Loves._ Bedside Books 1959, pbo, scv.
SABATIER, ROBERT. _Boulevard._ (Prix de Paris award novel, trans.
from French by Lowell Blair). David McKay 1958, pbr Dell 59, (m).
marginal.
SACKVILLE-WEST, VICTORIA. _The Dark Island._ Doubleday, 1934.
Shirin is the over-emotional, unconventional wife of Venn, dour owner of the "dark island", Storn. He treats Shirin so badly that she seeks companionship, love and affection from Christina, her husband"s secretary; through jealousy (not unmixed with pure sadism) Venn arranges for Christina to be drowned in a boating "accident". Haunting.
+ SALEM, RANDY. _Chris._ Beacon pbo, 1959. The plus indicates good of kind, not intrinsic merit. An interesting story of a lesbian triangle-Chris, Dizz, and young Carol. One reader commented that this story was a sort of lesbian dreamworld-these women seemed to live in a society, and a world, completely unmixed with ordinary life at all. Certainly they are all treated as quite the ordinary thing, and there are almost no hints that there is a heteros.e.xual world outside the gay one, which must be taken into account.
Certainly it makes no incursions into the novel. Chris, a conchologist, her life complicated by her frigid girl-friend Dizz, suffers and drinks too much and sleeps around until Carol, one of her random pick-ups, decides to stick to her, and eventually frees Chris from this attachment. Good but unreal.