Between Two Women: Conversations About Love & Relationship (ISBN 1432719998)

like a textual photograph:
This book spans a bridge anchored by two different lives, and yet includes all the details necessary to hold the bridge in place and keep the story in focus. FOCUS is a good word to apply for the book in general, which reads like a photograph: each detail is presented until you realize that you are seeing what the writer sees, both the literal reality and the literary truth, with the same clarity and understanding. She does not seem to expect that the reader would take the same picture, but she (gently) insists for the duration of the book that you see what she sees, and she makes it very easy to do so.

An unexpected legacy of loving:
I've been looking forward to reading this book since I met Patricia Harrelson at a writing residency a few years ago. Struck by her dedication to the project, and intrigued with how oral history and memoir would mesh, I was thrilled to google her and find that the book had recently been published. Between Two Women is a breakthrough book in terms of genre. Patricia has interwoven the story of her elderly friend, Carol, navigating career and personal life as a lesbian, pre-Stonewall, with her own coming out journey. Her antidotes and reflections reveal a very different life, being married for 30 years and raising children, and it becomes clear as we find out more about Carol that there is a legacy to be handed down. Both characters are compelling. I was inspired by their courage in living and loving authentically, despite the challenges the mainstream culture afforded them. The book begins a conversation, that I hope will continue, about how the lessons, and sacrifices, of previous generations can ease the burden on subsequent ones, especially in populations that have been marginalized and are now taking their rightful place in communities across the United States.

What happens when we change?:
This book works at two levels: It tells the story of 51-year-old Patricia Harrelson's falling in love with a woman for the first time. It also reveals some very important history of lesbian life in the mid-20th century by exploring the life of a lesbian in her 70s. The weaving together of these two stories makes for rich and captivating reading. It's an important book in many ways. And it asks a question of the human condition: what happens to us and those around us when we change? I've interviewed Harrelson and will post on Monday 10/6/08 her thoughts about writing this book at: www.beingandwriting.blogspot.com.

People will be quoting her.:
I loved this book, from the depth the author reached while delving into herself to the gorgeous descriptions of where she lives. (I swear, I could feel the weather change as the chapters passed!) I liked the organization--the author exploring her new self as she explored the lesbian history of Carol, a 70-year-old friend. I liked the quotations Harrelson included throughout the course of the book, and I was impressed at all she remembered from what she had read and learned during her days in grad school. I really think that in the future people will be quoting HER. She seems like a wonderful, thoughtful woman, able to make a graceful transition from being a traditional wife to being a lesbian partner. I am glad she tackled this tremendously interesting task and carried it through, revealing so much of herself and her journey as she recorded the story of Carol and her journey. I expect this book will be a welcome addition to lesbian literature, but more, a welcome addition to literature that helps us all understand each other better. I value all I learned and felt as I read through the chapters. I can't say enough good stuff!

A Two-Spirited Book:
I really liked the double structure of this memoir. The narrator, who has just left a 30-year marriage to a man for a younger woman, intersperses her own story with that of the 70-year-old lesbian whose oral history she is transcribing. The contrast between her path, with a late coming out, and that of the woman she is interviewing illuminates both their lives. Harrelson includes poignant, painful glimpses of her children's difficulty accepting her new identity, and soul-searching commentary on her relationship complications with her new lover. As a bisexual woman, I was naturally poring through the book for evidence of what led the author to conclude that she was lesbian instead of bisexual. I was a bit disappointed there; lesbianism arrives like a revelation, without quite the degree of reflection that the author is able to shine on the dynamics of her major relationships. That and a few typos were my only quibbles with the book. I'd recommend Between Two Women to anyone interested in an unusual, later coming-out story; those struggling with how to deal with breaking it to an opposite-sex partner or your grown children; afficionados of memoir and of the recording of oral history; and anyone interested in lesbian narratives of the middle of the twentieth century and of the present.