Bruised Fruit

Among the several narrative strands in Anna Livia's complex and rewarding new novel, it is hard to say which story is more engrossing. A sexually abused girl named Patti becomes a man-killing dyke. Despite her promiscuity, no one sparks her romantic interest until she meets Caroline. Caroline has flown to San Francisco to escape her abusive English lover and finds, at last, a place of calm and order in which to work. Her friend and employer, Sydney, a hermaphrodite, falls in love with Caroline but ends up in a far more interesting relationship with a straight and formerly conventional Englishman named Harold. It may be the character of Harold, an ordinary bloke, that lifts this book above the rank and file of lesbian novels. Puzzled but determinedly in love, Harold is the unexotic Everyman that grounds these eccentric characters who might otherwise seem standard issue for gay and lesbian fiction. Well-written, fully realized, and occasionally surprising, this is Livia's best novel yet. --Regina Marler