Читать книгу Lover - Bertha Harris - Страница 4

“Violent, funny, beautiful, intelligent.”

—Jane Rule

“Lover is that rare thing, an authentic classic, with passages so lyrical they beg to be read out loud. I have two copies of the 1976 edition, one I have reread until it is frayed and soft with use, the other pristine and locked away, just in case some desperate lover were to steal the first—which they have. Quite a few copies have gone missing since 1976. Thank god someone has finally had the wisdom to reprint Bertha Harris’s opus. Now I can give women copies instead of threatening them if they touch mine.”

—Dorothy Allison

Author of Bastard Out of Carolina

“The re-issuing of Lover marks the return of one of our most brilliant novelistic talents. Bertha Harris’s melancholy comic genius can now be appreciated by a new generation. And the lengthy introduction she has provided, telling the lugubrious story of Daughters Inc. in hilarious, poignant detail, is itself a stunning achievement with all the condensed complexity of a first-rate novella.”

—Martin Duberman

Director of the Center for Lesbian

and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the CUNY

Graduate School and the author of

Cures and Stonewall

“Harris, an American equivalent of Monique Wittig, … is ingenious, sardonic, parodie. [She] explores the various roles women have played: grandmother, mother, daughter, sister, wife and second wife, businesswoman in man’s clothing, prostitute, factory worker, movie star, muse and tutelary spirit, warrior, artist, fake saint, martyr.”

—Catharine R. Stimpson

“Lover seduces the reader with its playful masquerading, its lyrical language, its entwined stories of women lovers who appear as debonair actors, precarious beam-walkers, languishing beauties—sexual outlaws all, pursuing, teasing, embracing, birthing each other. The introduction, by turns funny, sad, moving, and outrageous, is alone worth the price of the book. Lover is everything a seduction should be— smart, unpredictable, witty, provocative—and sexy.”

—Carolyn Allen

University of Washington