It's only 93 pages, but this little book (where the narrator addresses the entire story to the woman she loves who has just left her) is so heartbreaking in scope...though I suppose 'heartbreaking' is defined more by your experience and perspective in these matters. One person's heartbreak can be another's idea of eye-rolling melodrama.
Between the constant use of "you" and the mad rush from the very start I had my misgivings at first:
I never told you this, either. I thought you would think I was crazy, to be so emotional about you the first day I met you.
but now I'm totally swept in and can't help but see how different it is from what would have been its lesfic counterpart more than 50 years ago:
I never told you this, either. I thought you would think I was crazy, to be so emotional about you the first day I met you.
but now I'm totally swept in and can't help but see how different it is from what would have been its lesfic counterpart more than 50 years ago:
Solely because I have read other novels by the same author, I bought an ebook version of Insatiable, discovering it's nowhere near as wonderfully written as These Curious Pleasures or 3rd Sex 1st Person.
Sloane Britain's personal backstory is a haunting one. At the age of 32, apparently bereft that her family could not accept her being gay, Elaine Williams (Britain's real name) killed herself. A likable, if extremely private, editor for "sleaze paperback" publisher Midwood Books in the 1960s, Williams used the pseudonym Sloane Britain (with other variations on the same name) to write lesbian pulp. Some of it is so simply terrific (3rd Sex 1st Person, for sure) that, next to it, Insatiable lacks heart and soul and is merely a product of its time.
You can sense some of the writer's internal homophobia in Insatiable where lesbianism is clearly portrayed as something "perverted," to be hidden and only even partially acceptable when there are no men around to "satisfy" you. People who knew Elaine Williams said she lost some of the optimism she had early in her career and that cynicism, desperation and gritty hard luck themes took over her later work.
Unlike These Curious Pleasures, which suggested lesbians could love just as much as anyone else does and dared to hint at happiness for its main character, Insatiable is basically a train wreck of emotions and poor reactions to life. Even so, there are still traces here of a talented writer, if one who seems to have lost any enthusiasm or interest in the world around her.
I would so love to think that if Elaine Williams and her alter ego Sloane Britain had lived today, they'd be thriving both personally and professionally. That doesn't change what happened to her, of course, but it's something I pretend anyway as I realize people in my generation have it much easier (comparatively speaking, of course) than earlier gays and lesbians did.
Sloane Britain's personal backstory is a haunting one. At the age of 32, apparently bereft that her family could not accept her being gay, Elaine Williams (Britain's real name) killed herself. A likable, if extremely private, editor for "sleaze paperback" publisher Midwood Books in the 1960s, Williams used the pseudonym Sloane Britain (with other variations on the same name) to write lesbian pulp. Some of it is so simply terrific (3rd Sex 1st Person, for sure) that, next to it, Insatiable lacks heart and soul and is merely a product of its time.
You can sense some of the writer's internal homophobia in Insatiable where lesbianism is clearly portrayed as something "perverted," to be hidden and only even partially acceptable when there are no men around to "satisfy" you. People who knew Elaine Williams said she lost some of the optimism she had early in her career and that cynicism, desperation and gritty hard luck themes took over her later work.
Unlike These Curious Pleasures, which suggested lesbians could love just as much as anyone else does and dared to hint at happiness for its main character, Insatiable is basically a train wreck of emotions and poor reactions to life. Even so, there are still traces here of a talented writer, if one who seems to have lost any enthusiasm or interest in the world around her.
I would so love to think that if Elaine Williams and her alter ego Sloane Britain had lived today, they'd be thriving both personally and professionally. That doesn't change what happened to her, of course, but it's something I pretend anyway as I realize people in my generation have it much easier (comparatively speaking, of course) than earlier gays and lesbians did.
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