Salt
Water and Other Stories by
Barbara Wilson
Against the spare
landscape of new lesbian fiction, the stories in Salt Water
stand out as unusually distinguished and affecting--realistic
portrayals of longing and disconnection between women.
Award-winning author Barbara Wilson was a cofounder of Seal Press
and winner of a 1998 Lambda Literary Award for her memoir, Blue
Windows. In this new collection, she traces meetings of mind
and body, for the most part with sober detachment, but sometimes
with unexpected humor. In "Is This Enough for You?"
Wilson tracks the rapid escalation of a "conference
crush." The securely coupled Ellen finds herself attracted to
a fellow teacher named Nan, also in a long-term relationship. In
the space of a few hours, Ellen moves from a calm awareness that
Nan was "becoming beautiful in her mind" to a conviction
that Nan was "one of the most attractive women she'd ever
met." And despite their attempts to be good, despite their
firm resolutions, their bodies persist in bringing them together,
"like two dogs their owners are trying to pry apart."
Seriously good fiction from a seasoned writer. --Regina Marler
If
You Had a Family by
Barbara Wilson
Barbara
Wilson has received critical praise for her mystery
novels--including the great Murder
in the Collective--and her award-winning translations from
Norwegian. If You Had a Family is her first non-genre
novel, and it is wonderful. Warm, empathetic, and knowing, If
You Had a Family details the childhood and adult life of an
artist coming to terms with the loss of her mother, her emerging
lesbianism, and her attempts to locate herself in the world of
adult emotions and responsibilities. Wilson is a writer of
enormous intelligence and compassion, both of which shine through
in this novel.
"Wilson's new novel is
a meditation on the ties that bind, on the concept of, for lack of
a better term, family. Southern California in the 1950s,
beautifully evoked with its wildly colored flowers and apricot
trees, is midwesterner Polly Winter's new home. She wants to cast
off the strictures of her rigid Christian Scientist background and
provide warmth and joy to her small daughter, Cory, and tiny son,
Kevin. This dream shatters when, having postponed medical
examination of a breast lump, she dies of cancer, leaving the
children to their father, an emotionally absent orphan who creates
a new category of orphanhood for bereaved Cory. After enduring
repressed childhood memories and trauma for a quarter century,
Cory must deal with the pain of her past as she struggles to make
her relationship with Rosemary work. Wilson writes thoughtfully
and tenderly, with obvious affection for the pieces of her
characters' personalities that stubbornly don't quite fit into the
picture of a problemless life." -- Whitney Scott from
Booklist
