Jane Rule’s incandescent third novel explores love, loss, and family . . . and the pieces of ourselves we leave behind
Born lame, Amelia Larson lives in the house that has been in her family for generations. Now she has a decision to make: Should she honor the dying wish of her sister, Beatrice, to burn her diaries? There are sixty-nine in all: one journal for each year of Beatrice’s life since the age of six.
Beginning in 1913 and traversing World War I and beyond, the diaries become a moving counterpoint to Amelia’s life as they unpeel layers of family history. As the past starts to impinge on the present, her relations—then and now—come to vivid life.
Told from alternating points of view, Against the Season opens an illuminating window into small-town life. As the sins and secrets of a family are revealed through the sometimes-faulty lens of memory, it is a story about the seasons of life and the ties that bind us even beyond death.ni
Against the Season, Jane Rule's third novel, was published by McCall in 1971. It is an ensemble novel of small-town life centred on Amelia Larson, an older woman who lives in her family's house, takes in unwed mothers as household help, and must decide whether to honour her dead sister's wish that her diaries be burned. Around her Rule builds a community going through birth, love and death.
Among its couples are Dina Pyros, a used-furniture dealer and the town's butch, and Rosemary Hopwood, who courts her openly and persistently. A 1984 review, written when Naiad Press reissued the novel, praised the way the two women make their love visible and support each other in the face of public ridicule, and the way the book sets a lesbian love story inside a wider community of lives rather than apart from it.
That interest in community runs through Rule's later work, from The Young in One Another's Arms to Contract with the World. Rule, whose Desert of the Heart (1964) is one of the landmark lesbian novels of the century, was named to the Order of Canada in 2007, and Against the Season returned as an ebook in 2013.
Publication History
ISBN
9780841500839
Copyright Date
1971
Publication Date
1971
Publisher
McCall Pub. Co
Format
Hardcover
No. of Pages
218
Language
English
Rating
Good
ISBN
9780863582820
Copyright Date
1972
Publication Date
1972
Publisher
Peter Davies
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Rating
Good
Copyright Date
1975
Publication Date
1975
Publisher
Manor Books
No. of Pages
218
Language
English
ISBN
0532122607
Copyright Date
1971
Publication Date
January 1975
Publisher
Manor Books
Format
Paperback
No. of Pages
218
Language
English
Rating
Good
ISBN
9780930044480
Copyright Date
1984
Publication Date
January 1, 1984
Publisher
Naiad Press
Format
Paperback
No. of Pages
224
Language
English
ISBN
9780863582820
Copyright Date
1988
Publication Date
1988
Publisher
Pandora
Format
Paperback
No. of Pages
218
Language
English
Rating
Good
ISBN
0930044487
Copyright Date
1971
Publication Date
March 1989
Publisher
Naiad Press
Format
Trade Paperback
No. of Pages
224
Language
English
Rating
Good
ISBN
9781480429536
Publisher
Independent Publishers Group (Chicago Review Press)
Comment
Against the Season, Jane Rule's third novel, was published by McCall in 1971. It is an ensemble novel of small-town life centred on Amelia Larson, an older woman who lives in her family's house, takes in unwed mothers as household help, and must decide whether to honour her dead sister's wish that her diaries be burned. Around her Rule builds a community going through birth, love and death.
Among its couples are Dina Pyros, a used-furniture dealer and the town's butch, and Rosemary Hopwood, who courts her openly and persistently. A 1984 review, written when Naiad Press reissued the novel, praised the way the two women make their love visible and support each other in the face of public ridicule, and the way the book sets a lesbian love story inside a wider community of lives rather than apart from it.
That interest in community runs through Rule's later work, from The Young in One Another's Arms to Contract with the World. Rule, whose Desert of the Heart (1964) is one of the landmark lesbian novels of the century, was named to the Order of Canada in 2007, and Against the Season returned as an ebook in 2013.