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A novel of lesbian identity and motherhood, and the societal pressures that place them in opposition. The daughter of an illustrious French family whose members include a former Prime Minister, a model, and a journalist, Constance Debré abandoned her marriage and legal career in 2015 to write full-time and begin a relationship with a woman. Her transformation from affluent career woman to broke single lesbian was chronicled in her 2018 novel Play boy, praised by Virginie Despentes for its writing that is at once “flippant and consumed by anxiety.” In Love Me Tender, Debré goes on to further describe the consequences of that life-changing decision. Her husband, Laurent, seeks to permane...
'Defiant, probing, hot' Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes At the age of forty-three, the narrator abandons her marriage, her apartment and her successful legal career as a public defender to re-emerge as an out lesbian and a writer. In a series of short, sharp vignettes, the narrator describes her first female lovers - a married woman fifteen years older than her, a model ten years her junior - punctuated by encounters with her ex-husband, her father and her son. Looking at the world through fresh eyes, she questions everything that once lay beneath the surface of her well-managed life. Unburdened by marital and familial obligations, a new woman emerges, free to examine gender and marriage, selfishness and sacrifice, money and family, even the privilege inherent in her downward mobility. A compelling chronicle of transgression, Playboy is Constance Debré's unflinching account of new bachelorhood. Laconic, aggressive and radically truthful, she chronicles the process that made her one of the most important French writers today. Translated by Holly James
Constance seemingly had it all: born into a wealthy and influential family; a career as a successful lawyer, love from her husband and son. But behind this veneer was the stifling pressure to conform to the boundaries of French society within which she could not be herself and survive. Playboy traces one woman's transition from straight lawyer, mother and wife to the buzz-cut and tattooed lesbian[Bokinfo].
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'Destined to become a classic of its kind' Maggie Nelson 'One of the most compulsive voices I've read in years' Olivia Laing, Observer When Constance told her ex-husband that she was dating women, he made a string of unfounded accusations that separated her from her young son, Paul. Laurent trained Paul to say he no longer wants to see his mother, and the judge believed him. She approaches this new life with passionate intensity and the desire for an unencumbered existence, certain that no love can last. Apart from cigarettes, two regular lovers and women she has brief affairs with, Constance's approach is monastic and military - she swims daily, reads, writes, and returns to small or borrowed rooms for the night. A starkly beautiful account of impossible sacrifices asked from mothers, Love Me Tender is a bold novel of defiance, freedom and self-knowledge.
First published in 1995, this award-winning novel, written from the epicentre of the AIDS crisis, is a bold, achingly honest story set in the rat bohemia of New York City, whose huddled masses include gay men and lesbians who bond with one ano...
Wayne Koestenbaum's first book of short fiction: a collection of whimsical, surreal, baroque, ribald, and heartbreaking fables. In his first book of short fiction--a collection of whimsical, surreal, baroque, ribald, and heartbreaking fables--Wayne Koestenbaum takes the gloom and melancholy of our own terrifying political moment and finds subversive solace by overturning the customary protocols of tale-telling. Characters and narrators wander into strange locales; the difference between action and thinking, between reality and dream, grows moot in a heightened yet burlesque manner. The activities in The Cheerful Scapegoat are a cross between a comedy of manners and a Sadean orgy. Language ha...
Inspired by her mother's stories of war and Nigeria's folktale traditions, Under the Udala Trees is Chinelo Okparanta's deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly