Overview

A touchstone novel of lesbian adolescence, set years before gay liberation.

After sixteen-year-old Lynn writes her thirty-seven-year-old English teacher a letter, they embark on one of the funniest—and saddest—love affairs in fiction, shrouded in secrecy and guilt. Years before gay liberation, all Lynn knows about “lezbos” is that they wear their hair in crew cuts, buy suits like her father’s, and sprout mustaches over their upper lips. Trying to pass as “normal,” Lynn continues to neck with her boyfriend and make homophobic jokes with her friends. Feigning innocence with her parents, she checks the mirror for telltale signs of “perversion” each night.