Macdougal Alley
Tatheena Roberts
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From Publishers Weekly
Two women struggle to overcome their disastrous childhoods, finding sexual freedom and love in Roberts’s debut lesbian romance, set in 1930s Manhattan. Once in step with the often-shifting point of view, readers will engage deeply with this story of pre-WWII Brooklyn and Greenwich Village. Mina Arenholt, a 13-year-old German Catholic, buries her mother and returns home to her sexually abusive stepfather. At age 17, her attraction to classmate Katy Conklin grows into love, as an innocent shower together quickly becomes an erotic episode for the two girls. Discovery by Katy’s father leads to Katy’s exile to a convent and Mina’s understanding of her sexuality. She moves in with her Aunt Willie in Astoria, and eventually finds her way to 12 MacDougal Alley, in bohemian Greenwich Village. Young Chana Stern, meanwhile, coping with her widowed mother’s newfound Hasidic conservatism, attempts to resist a prearranged marriage and ultimately abandons her new husband, beginning a fresh life as a painter. With the eventual convergence of the characters’ lives hovering on Roberts’s predictable horizon, the author manages to navigate the interlude (Mina is a nude model in Chana’s art class) with a sure hand, leaving no emotional outlets untapped. Roberts’s period atmosphere adds a dash of realism to the steamy theatrics, and her extensive knowledge of Jewish ceremonial tradition gives her narrative breadth and authenticity. Although the author, who completed this novel shortly before her 80th birthday, lacks the skills of romance heavies Steele and Krantz, her story will be appreciated for its pastoral atmosphere by readers who yearn for a fiery romantic yarn that accommodates an alternative lifestyle. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Roberts, retired from working as a portrait artist and acting in California’s La Jolla Playhouse, completed this debut novel at 80. Is it the consummation of decades of observation, onstage performance, and note taking–the dreamed-of first novel masterwork–no. However, it’s well worth reading, especially for the historic backdrop, since readers meet the adolescent protagonists in 1935 and follow them until 1941. The author’s use of parallel heroines Mina and Chana can be confusing initially, but readers will soon adapt, knowing the two are destined for each other after encountering unsuitable partners and society’s hatred of same-sex love. They’re equally destined for Greenwich Village, New York’s bohemian bastion of artists, writers, eccentrics, and homosexuals. Along the way, however, they experience incest, brutality, forced marriage, total family domination, and eventual rejection–and even a decent man. We are who we are, suggests Roberts, so the pleasure in this book is in the journey of two young women struggling to make a life together, not find themselves, in a rapidly changing world. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Details
| ISBN | 1555835406 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publication Date | 16-Mar-01 |
| Publisher | Alyson Books |
| Format | Trade Paperback |
| No. of Pages | 288 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | NotRated |
| BookID | 7924 |
