When it comes to authors that every gay girl should have on her shelf, there are certain names that come readily to mind. Sarah Waters, for one. Maybe Radclyffe Hall — who kick-started modern lesbian fiction with The Well of Loneliness in 1928 — and Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Jeanette Winterson seems a popular choice, as do Fannie Flagg and Rita Mae Brown. I don’t think that many people’s first — or second, or third — suggestion would be Ernest Hemingway.

But many people would, in my opinion, be missing something. Hemingway is a fascinating author for queer women to read — mostly because he seems to have been so fascinated by queer women. A film of one of his last unfinished novels — The Garden of Eden, starring Mena Suvari and former Bond Girl Caterina Murino — is due out in the U.K. this year. And although I’m worried for various reasons that it may succumb to Bad Lesbian Movie syndrome, the book did at least provide a template for the filmmakers to create a wrenching portrait of a woman trying to understand her gender and her sexuality.

The sprawling, unfinished manuscript of Garden was first published, in severely edited form, in 1986. It tells the story of David and Catherine Bourne, a young couple on honeymoon in France in the 1920s. Although at first they appear idyllically happy, cracks appear in the marriage as Catherine (who will be played by Suvari, pictured above) becomes obsessed with androgyny and gender role reversal, cutting her hair short and persuading her husband to cut and dye his hair so that they will look alike. Then she tries to bring another young woman, Marita (who will be played by Murino, pictured below), into the relationship. Catherine becomes increasingly open about her desire to explore her feelings for women. … continue reading