That still matters?

This post isn't exactly about motherhood--but it is about acceptable life choices for women.


I was thrilled when I recently found a new book by one of my favorite authors.  Especially since I was about to spend a good chunk of a day in airports and on airplanes.

As I waited to board my first flight, I pulled the book out of my bag.  Before I even opened it, I noticed something different about this book--this was a low-end publication job.  The cover was a stock photo with minimal design.  I flipped the book open and sure enough, this, the American edition, was from a publisher I'd never heard of (though it was published by Little, Brown in England last year).

This author is a pretty big name--not a John Grisham, but one of her series has been turned into a TV show and one of the characters in Girl with a Dragon Tattoo reads her books.  So, I was curious--why was this big name author being published by a no-name press?  So I snooped a bit further.

In the acknowledgments, the author thanked her wife and son for their support.  "Huh." I thought, "I didn't know she was a lesbian."  But when I flipped to the back flap, the author blurb only mentioned her son.  Well, that explained why I didn't know. . .

Then I started reading.  Charlie, our female protagonist, opens the novel pondering whether to stay with her wife of seven years or see if there are any possibilities with another woman she's met.  All of the main characters in the book are lesbians--though the book isn't a "lesbian book."  Rather it's a well written, tight thriller--just like all this author's other books.  It just happens that the characters are lesbians in this work.

The delayed publication in the US and the no name press made sense--kinda.  Apparently publishers feel that while American readers are willing to read books about vampires and werewolves, sexual sadists and time travelers, they aren't ready to read a book about lesbians.  Additionally, I think that the assumption (and maybe the actuality) is that readers are more comfortable with gay male characters than female.  But why?  If this big name author has a hard time getting her book published, just because of the orientation of her characters, what other great books are we missing out on because of the unwillingness of publishers to print these books?


Sadly, the reviews on Amazon seem to support the publishers hesitancy.  My favorite: "It is an excuse to peddle the lesbian agenda. Most of the characters are lesbian with a few extra homophobic heteros. The reaction of the drunken catholic father on discovering his daughter's lesbian relationship was ludicrous. It is hardly the 1950s."  Seems to me if you are going to accuse a novel of having a "lesbian agenda" just because the characters are lesbian, you can't also express disbelief that a father would kick his daughter out of the house because she's come out to him. 


ps You can find the book and other reviews here.  I purposely kept the author's name out of this post.