Jane Rule – författare

This was the freedom she wanted, an animal freedom exposed to the emptiness of sky and land and water. As she stepped forward, Ann flipped into the water and was gone.Evelyn Hall, running from her disastrous marriage of sixteen years, arrives in the neon-lit desert heat of 1950s Reno - the only place in America where she can apply for a quick divorce. Arriving at her guesthouse she meets free-spirited Ann Childs, a casino 'change girl' fifteen years her junior. Overwhelmed by both the vast, lonely beauty of the Nevada desert and her magnetic attraction to Ann, Evelyn must gamble all her own certainties and conventions to win a new kind of freedom.Bold, witty and shimmering with desire, this groundbreaking 60s novel is an unforgettable queer classic.INTRODUCED BY JACKIE KAY'An undisputed lesbian classic' SARAH WATERS'Intelligent and utterly believable' JOYCE CAROL OATES 'Brave, bold and brilliant' JACKIE KAY

“A landmark work of lesbian fiction” and the basis for the acclaimed film Desert Hearts (The New York Times).  Against the backdrop of Reno, Nevada, in the late 1950s, award-winning author Jane Rule chronicles a love affair between two women. When Desert of the Heart opens, Evelyn Hall is on a plane that will take her from her old life in Oakland, California, to Reno, where she plans to divorce her husband of sixteen years. A voluntary exile in a brave new world, she meets a woman who will change her life. Fifteen years younger, Ann Childs works as a change apron in a casino. Evelyn is instantly drawn to the fiercely independent Ann, and their friendship soon evolves into a romantic relationship. An English professor who had always led a conventional life, Evelyn suddenly finds all her beliefs about love, morality, and identity called into question. Peopled by a cast of unforgettable characters, this is a novel that dares to ask whether love between two women can last.  

A decades-spanning novel of sisterhood and family secrets from an “extraordinary writer” (Katherine V. Forrest).  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.  

Jane Rule’s second novel follows a group of friends through New York and abroad as they explore the freedoms—and limitations—of sexuality in a time of stifling social conventionKatherine George—Kate to her intimates—is captain of her high school debating and swimming teams. But beneath her high-achieving exterior is a young woman on a quest for meaning and fulfilling relationships. Through her decades-long correspondence with Esther, the woman with whom she falls passionately in love, Kate shares the story of her journey into womanhood. As the sexually repressed fifties gives way to the liberated sixties, Kate’s odyssey takes her further and further from home. This Is Not for You also chronicles the travails of Kate’s intimate circle of friends as they, too, come to terms with their sexuality. Years pass before Kate writes her last letter, and can finally let go and move on. Reissued decades after it first appeared, this is a cathartic, unforgettable novel about the search for identity, intimacy, and love.

The stories in this remarkable collection by Jane Rule explore the relationships among men and women, women and women, and families—both conventional and unconventional From traditional families to relationships that break new ground, this anthology runs the gamut of human emotions.  The eponymous heroine “Dulce” is a self-proclaimed muse, witch, whore, “preying lesbian,” and “devouring mother” who has a profound effect on the lives of the women and men around her. “His Nor Hers” tracks the unraveling of a marriage—with unexpected results. “The Real World” explores the moral universe of a female mechanic who creates an unconventional family. In “A Matter of Numbers,” a divorced math professor falls in love with her twenty-year-old student. And the title story introduces two women—one widowed, one divorced—who rediscover romance aboard a cruise ship. Whether she’s turning the spotlight on unfulfilled wives, frustrated husbands, friends, or secret lovers, Inland Passage is Jane Rule at her most insightful.  

Fiction and nonfiction form compelling counterpoints in this powerful look at love and lesbianism  The stories and essays in this anthology depict homosexuality in all its variegated forms.   In “Home Movie,” Alysoun Carr, a clarinetist with the San Francisco Symphony, learns about overcoming fear from a woman named Constantina. “In the Attic of the House” depicts sixty-five-year-old Alice, who rents rooms to younger gay women who have no inkling of Alice’s tragic lesbian past. “Outlander” is about a widowed alcoholic trying to stay sober through a war that will take her son and, possibly, her longtime lover. “Sexuality in Literature” is a lively essay about everything from the homophobia that exists in all of us to the new words that need to be invented for female sexuality.

Told as a series of interconnected stories, Jane Rule’s fifth novel—offering six characters’ shifting perspectives—takes us to a place where feminism, creativity, and sexual politics collide Contract with the World follows a group of friends, artists, and lovers as they negotiate the shifting terrain of the 1970s—a time when gay and lesbian politics were just emerging.   Divided into six parts, the novel enters a world marked by desire, ambition, jealousy, and love. We follow these sexually adventurous thirty-something friends as they marry, divorce, take lovers, lose love, and never stop searching for personal and artistic fulfillment. Whether gay, straight, or bisexual, Rule’s characters are as much a product of the era that defines them as of the wise and foolhardy choices they make in their own turbulent lives—choices that will have inevitable, sometimes tragic consequences.

Five women at critical crossroads in their lives come together in this gem of a novel set on an island off the coast of Vancouver  After the Fire introduces a quintet of very different women as they struggle with abandonment, loss, and new beginnings—both together and alone. There is Karen Tasuki, who recently separated from her partner and wonders if she’ll ever get used to being alone . . . until she befriends Red, who cleans houses for the island’s privileged inhabitants. Miss James is the eccentric Southern spinster born at the turn of the century. Milly Forbes is a woman whose husband “went scot free after stealing twenty years of her life.” And the sensible Henrietta “Hen” Hawkins yearns for her absent, ill husband.   On a rural island that they dub a “used-wife lot,” the five heroines nurture one another as they cope with loneliness, death, and renewed life. Imbued with wit and compassion, After the Fire is a novel about women loving women and women helping women—and the bond that transcends age, race, and even gender.

An estranged brother and sister reconnect in this moving novel from “perhaps the most significant lesbian fiction writer of the 20th century” (Katherine V. Forrest, author of Curious Wine).  When the novel opens, Diana’s twin brother, David, a widower in his mid-sixties, is looking back on his life. As memories swamp him, he decides to take a critical step: to beg for his sister’s forgiveness. Diana has never met David’s two daughters. She has no idea how many grandchildren he has. David doesn’t know Diana’s longtime lover, Constance, housebound by advancing memory loss and for whom Diana writes the day’s events on an erasable board to help her keep track of a life that’s slipping away. Estranged for nearly forty years, David appears at Diana’s dinner table, throwing her life into turmoil. But as she and her brother begin to rediscover each other, they both find the strength to move on with their lives. Told in Diana and David’s alternating points of view, Memory Board makes a powerful case for living in the present and making every moment count.

The essays in this inspiring collection analyze the craft of writing and the art of living and loving    Jane Rule shares her insights into the creative process, sexual fidelity, feminist politics, and the transformative power of love.      Part I—“On Writing”—dispenses advice (writing is “a craft that has to be practiced”); offers observations (“The creative process in any art takes time”); and dissects the writer-publisher relationship, both feminist and traditional. Part II—“Writing for the Gay Press”—discusses, among other things, what it means to be a lesbian writer.   With chapters like “The Myth of Genital Jealousy” and “You Cannot Judge a Pumpkin’s Happiness by the Smile Upon Its Face,” this collection shatters common myths such as why you should always write about what you know. There are also moving pieces about Rule’s grandmother, artists who have influenced Rule, and what it is to be human and female in your time. From censorship to morality in literature to how men and women can live together in peace, A Hot-Eyed Moderate is Jane Rule at her provocative best.  

Jane Rule’s fourth book explores lesbianism as portrayed by authors from Gertrude Stein to Colette, from Vita Sackville-West to May Sarton and Willa Cather Lesbian Images opens with a disclaimer from the author: “This book is not intended to be a comprehensive literary or cultural history of lesbians.” Rather, as Jane Rule goes on to tell us, her goal is to present her own attitudes and measure them against the images of lesbianism as depicted by other female authors. Thus, chapters titled “Gertrude Stein 1874–1946,” “Willa Cather 1876–1947,” and “Ivy Compton-Burnett 1892–1969,” among many others, reveal how the concept of love between women can be filtered through one’s personal experiences and perceptions. There are also chapters about lesbian myths and morality; the effect of the women’s movement on lesbianism; the inherent conflicts between lesbianism and feminism; how Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness changed fifteen-year-old Rule’s life; and what it means to be labeled a lesbian writer. At once astute and nonjudgmental, Lesbian Images is a deeply engaging work that sounds a powerful note of hope for the future.  

An award-winning novel of lesbian identity and camaraderie amid violence and war Ruth Wheeler is the one-armed caretaker of a motley crew of boarders living in her rooming house in Vancouver, British Columbia. The miscreants and outcasts in residence include a sexually confused academic, a one-time-dope-addict-turned-law-student, a high-minded deserter of the Vietnam War, a socially conscious female radical, and a gay man on the run from the cops. Despite personal differences and a turbulent outside world teeming with police brutality, the renters’ affection for one another grows and they form a progressive and idealistic “chosen family.”   However, Ruth’s devoted and assimilative spirit is put to the test when her property is slotted to be destroyed by developers. The household packs up and sails to Galiano Island, where they establish a new home, start a business, and strive to overcome the initial antipathy of their neighbors. They even decide to collectively raise a baby born from an unwanted pregnancy.   Winner of the 1978 Canadian Authors Association Best Novel of the Year Award, The Young in One Another’s Arms stands as one of the most sophisticated portrayals of an alternative model for domestic life.      

Three beautiful novels from the groundbreaking, award-winning author—including “a landmark work of lesbian fiction” and basis for the film Desert Hearts (The New York Times).   First published in 1964, Desert of the Heart broke ground with its realistic and complex portrayal of love between two women, and immediately established Jane Rule’s reputation as an “extraordinary writer—perhaps the most significant lesbian fiction writer of the twentieth century” (Katherine V. Forrest).  Desert of the Heart: Rule’s debut novel is set in 1950s Reno, Nevada, where English professor Evelyn Hall has come for a quick divorce from her husband. There she meets Ann Childs, fifteen years her junior, who works as a change apron in a casino. As their friendship deepens into a romantic relationship, Evelyn’s preconceptions about love, morality, and identity are challenged.   “An intelligent and utterly believable novel.” —Joyce Carol Oates  The Young in One Another’s Arms: In Ruth Wheeler’s Vancouver rooming house during the Vietnam War, an eclectic assortment of misfits, dropouts, deserters, and radicals become each other’s chosen family. When developers threaten the property, the community is challenged to find a new home on Galiano Island.   “[A] mature and satisfying work.” —Bay Area Reporter  This Is Not for You: Through a decades-long correspondence between Katherine and Esther, the woman with whom she falls passionately in love, Rule’s second novel follows a group of friends living in New York and abroad as they explore the freedoms—and limitations—of their sexuality, as the repressed fifties gives way to the liberated sixties.   “A beautiful, ironic, civilized novel.” —Margaret Lawrence

Set in the late 1950s, this is the story of Evelyn Hall, an English Professor, who goes to Reno to obtain a divorce and put an end to her disastrous 16-year marriage. While staying at a boarding house to establish her six-week residency requirement she meets Ann Childs, a casino worker and fifteen years her junior. Physically, they are remarkably alike and eventually have an affair and begin the struggle to figure out just how a relationship between two women can last.Desert of the Heart examines the conflict between convention and freedom and the ways in which the characters try to resolve the conflict

Reno, am Rande der Wüste von Nevada - die Stadt des Glücksspiels, in der Vermögen schnell gewonnen und verloren werden. Die Stadt, in der Ehen schnell geschlossen und geschieden werden. Es ist die Zeit der schnittigen Straßenkreuzer und des Rock''n''Roll. Evelyn Hall, Literaturprofessorin aus New York, kommt nach Reno, um sich nach sechzehn Jahren leidenschaftsloser Ehe scheiden zu lassen. Sie ist eine Frau, die Konventionen respektiert, dem Glücksspiel nichts abgewinnt und sich vor der Wüste fürchtet. Ann Childs hingegen liebt die Wüste und arbeitet in einem Spielcasino. Sie findet immer eine Frau fürs Bett, sucht aber eigentlich die Frau fürs Leben. Als sie Evelyn begegnet, verführt sie die spröde Lady mit atemberaubender Finesse. Zwischen den beiden Frauen entwickelt sich eine ebenso leidenschaftliche wie riskante Liebe ...