Archive

Across the Page: A literary thriller, a coming-of-age love story, and a memoir about sexual identity

This month’s “Across the Page” features a literary thriller, a coming-of-age love story and a compelling memoir about sexual identity: Jennifer McMahon’s Dismantled, Sylvia Brownrigg’s Pages for You, and Audrey Beth Stein’s Map.

The first thing I wanted to do when I finished Dismantled was to go back and read it again-not only because it is that good (it is), but because I wanted to chart the complex plot that Jennifer McMahon weaves in this addictive and highly suspenseful literary thriller.

Dismantled is the story of four friends who form a group of “activist artists” while students at a small, progressive art school in Vermont. Led by the manipulatively charming and dogmatic Suz, the group’s manifesto states that, “To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart.”

Suz holds power over all the members in a unique way: Though Henry is dating Tess, it is clear to everyone that his true love is Suz; Winnie is Suz’s lover and teeters between playing the role of victim and villain; Tess is a part of the group primarily because of Henry, and although she questions Suz’s integrity, she is also honored to be chosen as a member.

All of the Dismantlers’ antics are fraught with danger and questionable intentions (they often serve Suz’s personal vendettas rather than art), but things take a turn for the worse when Suz convinces the group to kidnap Spenser, Winnie’s arrogant and controlling ex-boyfriend who once tried and failed to gain acceptance into the group. Drunk on tequila, the four take Spenser down to the lake near the cabin where they’re living together, post-graduation. Suz’s idea is to drown him, but it’s Suz who ends up in the water, her lifeless body weighted down with stones by Henry.

The remaining three Dismantlers and Spenser never tell a soul. Ten years later, Henry and Tess’s daughter unearths pictures and journals from the Dismantlers. In an attempt to get her now-separated parents back together, Emma and her best friend send a postcard to all of the members of the group. On the back reads the Dismantlers’ manifesto.

The girls had hoped that Henry and Tess would reunite by remembering when they first got together and loved each other. Instead, the stunt sets off a series of tragic and mysterious events, including Spenser’s suicide, fires that destroy old evidence, the appearance of Emma’s imaginary friend, Danner, who may or may not be a ghost, Tess’s affair with a woman, and a genuinely shocking ending that will, as I said before, send you right back to page one in an attempt to figure out McMahon’s brilliant plotting and character work.

Highly recommended.

Sylvia Brownrigg’s Pages for You is a story about first love and coming out. When Flannery Jansen first notices Anne Arden, an older graduate student and her Teacher’s Assistant at college, she is immediately intrigued. Instead of embracing her curiosity-which, try as she may to deny it, is fraught with attraction-Flannery runs in the complete opposite direction. And fast.

Flannery switches sections so that Anne is no longer her TA. She goes to parties at night and drinks until she can no longer remember Anne’s face. She dances with strangers, but just as things become romantic, she pulls away and retreats to the safety of her dorm. One night, as Flannery is dancing, she opens her eyes and sees Anne across the room. The two share a dance, or several. In her hung over fog the next morning, Flannery remembers this much-but nothing more. She is terrified by what she might have revealed, what longings or confessions she may have whispered in Anne’s ear, and so, again, she does what she knows best: she withdraws.

But this time, Anne doesn’t let Flannery off so easily and a few days later, a collection of Marilyn Hacker poems, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, shows up in Flannery’s campus mailbox. After reading through the book, a collection of poems that tell the love story of two women, Flannery composes her own poem to Anne and decides to visit her in New York for Thanksgiving break, where the two finally get together.

Vignette after vignette captures Flannery’s discovery of sexuality and how it transforms the way she thinks about herself, Anne, and the world. The women’s relationship continues after they return to campus and it’s all encompassing. Brownrigg charts Flannery’s experience in all its beautiful and confusing stages, while carefully using the additional layer of conflict in the women’s age difference.

When the two take a trip to Florida, different tensions surface, including Anne’s recent job offer in New Mexico. The trip hints at trouble to come, but also shows that Flannery is not the same innocent, young kid she was at the beginning of this journey. Pages for You is a compelling, nostalgic and thorough portrait of first love.

Map, Audrey Beth Stein’s memoir and a 2009 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, is one of the more honest and humorous reflections on coming out and on bisexuality that I’ve read in a while. The book opens with a simple premise: “I want a girlfriend.” But that’s where the simplicity ends.

As a college student, Stein was engaged in the school newspaper, surrounded by an accepting and diverse group of friends, and embraced by a loving family. But as she thoughtfully examines in Map, her journey toward understanding her bisexuality was less about pressure from the outside world and more about the questions that existed within her own mind and heart.

Stein is clear that she is attracted to both men and women, but this fact does not bring her comfort. Rather, she believes, it destines her to spend her life alone. When a friend asks her whom she thinks or imagines she’ll be with in the future, Stein draws a blank. She cannot picture the future and it’s this uncertainty that causes her so much angst.

When Stein begins an online correspondence with Catrina, a woman who lives across the country, she believes this is finally the answer she’s been searching for. The two women tell each other that they love each other. Stein defends the relationship to her skeptical friends. She comes out to her parents.

But Catrina isn’t all that Stein hoped for and imagined. It is only after this revelation and she is able to step out into the “real” world that Stein begins to find some actual clarity and answers-and, finally, to get that long sought after girlfriend.

Map is a sweet and smart book.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button