Women in The Shadows

Beebo Brinker #3

by Ann Bannon

Designated the "Queen of Lesbian Pulp" for her landmark novels beginning in 1957, Ann Bannon’s work defined lesbian fiction for the pre-Stonewall generation. Following the release of Cleis Press’s new editions of Beebo Brinker and Odd Girl Out, Women in the Shadows picks up with Beebo’s relationship with Laura waning, as both women become caught in the cultural tumult (gay bar raids, heavy drinking, gay rights advocacy) that anticipates by ten years the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969. New introduction explains the book’s evolution, including the role Bannon’s divorce played in shaping the lesbian protagonist’s outrage.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Romance, Lesbian, Pulp, Classics

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Ann Bannon (pseudonym of Ann Weldy) is an American author and academic. She is known for her lesbian pulp novels, which comprise The Beebo Brinker Chronicles and earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction."

Bannon was featured in the documentaries Before Stonewall (1984) and Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992)

Reviews

[Sonnydee]

Welp, this book is something of a miserable slog. You have to hand it to Ann Bannon for going there-- domestic violence in queer relationships, racism, internalized homophobia, lavender marriages-- but it's not a fun ride. I definitely see why this book is historically significant, but "Women in the Shadows" is too melodramatic and dated to be as poignant as it wants to be and ends up being just plain heavy. In a way the characters still make sense: Jack's always been a self-loathing jackass, Laura's always been pretty pathetic, and Beebo's always been unstable. But there's not quite enough redemption to justify the low points. By the end, I hated all the characters I'd grown to love in "I am a Woman."

I can't say I recommend it much unless (like myself) you're a nerd about lesbian histories and lesbian culture. I still love Bannon though and look forward to Beth's return in "Journey to a Woman" and to the prequel, "Beebo Brinker," which I hear is one of the stronger in the series.

[Tara]

I'm not going to rate this one, because I have zero clue how many stars to give it. It's well written with excellent character work, but whoa is it ever one rough fucking ride.

This book deals with alcoholism, interracial relationships, domestic violence in lesbian relationships, corrective rape, marriage between a gay man and a lesbian, and two dogs get murdered (we even get the grisly details of what happened to one of them).

I found it impossible to put down, but I can't say I enjoyed it. Read it if you're a completionist going for the whole Beebo Brinker series. If you just want to read a lesbian pulp for the first time, pick up Odd Girl Out instead.

[Anna Avian]

This one was the hardest to go through out of the Beebo Brinker books. I haven’t read about a more miserable and twisted relationship in a long time. So much self-hatred, homophobia, racism and domestic violence make up for a heavy and not very enjoyable read.

[Liv B.]

I love this series, but this book in particular includes some god-awful gratuitous trauma that completely ruined some of my favorite characters. Would Beebo really kill her own dog? COME ON. Props to Bannon for dealing with some of the darker issues in our community in those days. But it really seemed like she was going for blood with this one. Just twist the knife, why don't you?!

[Jacob]

Completely insane lol

[Shoshanna]

Much darker than the two previous books in the Beebo Brinker Chronicles, and this is addressed by Ann Bannon in the afterward of the book. This book still focuses and centers around Laura Landon and her relationships, as well as the pre Stonewall queer world of NYC, mostly the Village. In this book you see much more relationship strife. You see discussions of issues of race, interracial relationships, of bisexuality, of marriage, of internalized homophobia. You see marriage still completely only within the lens of one man and one woman, the idea being that ::if:: queer people want to live legitimate, above ground lives, the only way out is through man / woman marriages.

A very heavy read, but a read dealing with issues that queer people were dealing with in pre Stonewall NYC. Definitely going to finish this series because I am always interested in reading contemporary fiction of certain groups and times more than historical fiction written later!

[Phoebe]

i always feel like i need to preface my ann bannon reviews with some kind of disclaimer that says not to go into this expecting romance genre tropes or something like today's lgbtq fiction. maybe i'm influenced by reading ann bannon's afterward on the book but it's so hard not to see women in the shadows as written out of disillusionment and fear: disillusionment upon finding out the queer community is not utopian and fear that choosing to live as gay, for lack of a better way of putting it, is a mistake that will ruin your life. a recurring theme in the beebo series is the attempt to make a lasting life at the fringes of society; in women in the shadows we have two characters, jack and eventually laura, who project their relationship issues onto "being gay" (as it's presented in the book as a active lifestyle). neither of them have or have had the kind of romantic relationship that lasts and they have no models for a lasting queer relationship; jack especially fears that the rest of his life will be spent chasing after young men who will never love him back the way he loves them. so they marry each other in an attempt to build a life that will last, one that can survive in straight society's eye; a marriage that is also the only way either of them can have a child. it made me sad to read but i think the book isn't a moral indictment/guidebook but the expression of a very common fear queer people had, an attempt to rewrite the worst case scenario into something tolerable. a straight marriage and a child, but it's with your best friend.

side note that i have a lot of thoughts on beebo as a gender nonconforming character and the sometimes intersecting experiences of butch women and trans men/transmascs both in the 50s and now, but i can't exactly string them together now.

[Lauren]

When I got a used copy of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles this summer, my friend warned me not to read Women in the Shadows. "It's just racist and bad," she said. But, since I'd previously read Odd Girl Out, Beebo Brinker, and I Am a Woman, I was curious about this one.

Man, I should have heeded my friend's warning. Granted, Ann Bannon novels are pulpy and pre-Stonewall, but this particular one is fucked up beyond belief. While Beebo may have been problematic yet somewhat charming in the other novels, here she is a violent sociopath. Instead of being curmudgeonly but lovable, Jack Mann has now become grossly manipulative in his quest to go straight. We're introduced to a new character, Tris, who is not only self-hating about her lesbianism, but is a tragic mullato to boot. And poor old Laura Landon continues to be the blank vessel through which the other characters project their fantasies and pathologies. While the other Bannon novels offer glimpses of an exciting yet illicit queer life, the only message here is: to be gay is to be anguished and irredeemable.

[irem 🫐🥭]

REZALET bir kitap. Tüm trigger warning’ler eklenmeli içinde şiddet, r*pe, animal abuse, homofobi, toksik ilişki, underage ve birçok rahatsız edici şey var. Okurken ayıla bayıla okuduk (beğendiğimizden değil çok trigger olduğumuz ve rahatsızlıkta ara vermek zorunda olduğumuz için). Üzerindeki lesbian pulp fiction yazısını görüp heyecanla almıştık. Boşunaydı. Baş roldeki karakter Laura çok toksik bir ilişkide ve okurken sanıyorsunuz ki kitaba giren yeni bir karakter onu kurtaracak ve güzel bir love story olacak ama yanılgı oluyor çünkü YAZAR KİTAPTAKİ HER KARAKTERİ KAFADAN KIRIK MANYAK YAZMAYI TERCİH ETMİŞ ya bir karakter bile mi doğru düzgün olmaz her birinin değişik toksik berbat özellikleri var ee doğal olarak tüm kitap boyunca kimseye bağlanamıyorsunuz okurken, bu karakter başka malca ne yapacak da ne söyleyecek de her şeyi batıracak diyorsunuz. Yazar 50lerde yazdığı için midir bilinmez o kadar heteronormatif bir kafayla kurgulamış ki her olayı. Sonu da öyle bitiyor zaten kısacası bizim gibi kapaktaki yazıya kanıp aldıysanız paranıza da psikolojinize de yazık olacak çünkü içinde queer love’a dair hiçbir şey barındırmayan bu kitap okurken sizi hem triggerlayacak hem de toksik bir ilişki nasıl olur gösterecek. Berbat ya yazık Ann Bannon ninem yazmasaydı daha iyiyidi. Basılan ağaca mürekkebe yazık denecek bir kitap. Başroldeki Laura’nın mallığına mı Beeboo’nun delusional yalancı sosyapat şiddete meğilli ve literally mentally ill oluşuna mı üzüleyim, Jack’in manipülatif biri olmasına mı, Tris’in internalized homophobia’sı ve yalancılığına mı, Terry ne yapıyor belli değil zaten bence kitaptaki tek akıllı Lili gibiydi yani o da ne alaka çok zort her şeyiyle. Terapi seansımı ödeyin!!!! Burda bir kitaba sıfıt ya da eksi puan veremiyor muyuz??

[Tamara]

Oh god what a horror show. You kind of have to read Ann Bannon because she was, in the fifties, the "queen of lesbian pulp fiction", so if you are queer it's kind of part of the history of your people. But how awful. It makes me realize again and more deeply the significance of The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith. For a long time it was considered the only lesbian novel with a a "happy" ending - if you can call that ending happy. At least it doesn't end with someone's head in an oven or with a lesbian happily married to some random man.
Ann Bannon, the poor thing, was in the closet and unhappily married when she wrote her pulp under a pseudonym and Women in the Shadows reads less like lesbian pulp and more like a conversion therapy tract.
It sure makes me glad that I'm not a lesbian in 1959!
Here's to being queer in Canada in 2022.

[Emily Joy]

What a long uncomfortable read. Finally over. My full review can be found at the Lesbrary: http://lesbrary.com/2019/12/05/emily-...

[Pamela]

I must admit that this is one of Bannon's - and indeed, that of any other author - most difficult books I have ever read. Sometimes... most of the time, actually... what we wish would happen just doesn't and it's not in our power to change it, and it's heartbreaking. This book illustrates this reality in painful terms.

I read it first, agonized because I love these characters so much, because it's clear that Bannon loved them so much too. When I read it again a couple years later, I realized I was watching an artist destroy a beautiful canvas out of disillusionment, due to the death of a dream.

Published in 1959, the lovers who came together in a clash of passion from I Am a Woman, Laura and Beebo, are clashing again, but in a different sort of passion. The reality of their times conflicts with the romantic picture of what happy ever after should be. If the passionate romantic in you cheered for Laura and Beebo in I Am a Woman, the logical experienced person in you knew that that white hot affair would never last. Laura has an affair in this book with a woman so confused and experiencing so much self-hatred that she confounds all expectation and Beebo watches in a fury of self-destruction. Only the emotional rock of Jack Mann, Laura's best friend who is also gay, is a pleasant surprise. Laura and Jack get married in a completely platonic marriage as Bannon explores the mind-boggling details of what it was like to try to live some kind of normal life in the face of so much rejection and repression.

Years later, Bannon admitted that she was proud that she explored the issues in this book of interracial relationships and domestic violence. But she also admitted that she was not proud of how she portrayed Beebo Brinker, who she heaped all her unhappiness upon. But for Beebo, Bannon admitted that Beebo was strong enough to take it. She did survive and indeed grew in Bannon's later books.

Reading about Bannon's life while writing the books puts them in a much clearer context, and makes the book a little bit easier to read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Bannon (I wrote it...)

[Mel]

I think this is the most controversial of Brannon's pulp novels. It has the gay guy and the lesbian marrying as the gay guy realises he no longer wants to have his heart broken but wants to have a daughter instead. It was a very dark and sad book. There was a lot of internalised homophobia, even from the characters that had been accepting of their situation. When the gay guy married he said he finally felt like "a man" because he had a wife. It was odd to see how they settled into their 50s sterotypes even though they weren't having sex and even though they were both queer. But it was also obvious that they had a strong friendship and were trying to survive together, I felt really sorry for both of them. I think the most disturbing part of this book was when Beebo was gang-raped by 4 men (fortunately happened off screen). It actually made me cry reading in the coffee shop when she told Laura how she coudn't go to the doctor, and hadn't been in 20 years, because the doctor would see that she was a girl. It was also heartbreaking that no one thought she'd be having emotional trauma afterwards, but her girlfriend was surprised when she didn't feel better after her bruises faded a couple weeks later. It was another big emotional and melodramatic tale about having relationships with people who aren't good for you, and how you end up hurting people even when you don't mean to. There was domestic violence, interracial relationships, and gay parenting. It was tragic and beautiful. For some reason these characters just seem so real to me. I have two books left by Brannon to read and I'm really looking forward to them.

[Rick]

Well, this wasn't a book I probably would have read on my own, but as it was an assigned book for a class on Sex, Gender & Other Difficult Topics in Modern Fiction I found it very entertaining. As an example of the historical outlet for subculture it was fascinating, this was perhaps the most interesting aspect for me. Overall, the basic aspects of the book are fundamental pulp fiction with all the salacious aspects used to their fullest. If you go into the narrative understanding that part of the nature of this type of literature was expecting that anything that could go wrong would go wrong, you'll get the most enjoyent out of the material. The characters are often more cliché than well developed but once again, that's part of the cliché and part of the charm. If you're not careful, you'll find yourself caught up in these women's lives and get carried away. If you do, be warned it's part of of series, so there's lots to get involved with.

[Lili]

Good heavens I don’t know why I put myself through it.
I hurt for Laura, I truly do. She was hard to like in Odd Girl Out, I’ve never experienced internalised homophobia the way she had but I’ve been lucky to grow up in a society that’s more accepting than what our Laura had to live in. She’s a very interesting character and I felt pride in how she embraced her lesbianism, but as what seems to be the theme in these books, everything can be solved with a man’s love, loving a man, having a man to take care of you.
There is no fate I fear worse than having a child and while Laura appears to feel the same, we somehow come upon an ending where she’s happy to love a man and have his child… girl get it together.
Also Beebo was horrible in this book though my heart goes out to her in the final few chapters. Reformed Beebo is a bit epic I fear.

[Bandit]

This was the darkest one probably out of the Beebo Brinker chronicles. A really deep sobering look into the chemistry of a disintegrating relationship, all that goes into it and all the ways one escapes such a thing. The ending was sad in its finality and its message, but quite appropriate for the time the story takes places in. Though the book tended to dive into high dramatics now and again, it was also surprisingly serious and offered much insight to the innerworkings of human mind and heart. Recommended.

[DJay]

Not a great read

Not a great read. I liked book 1 from the series better. Laura is a selfish, destructive character. No redeeming qualities. At least Beebo changed for the better in the end. Didn't care for Jack's character either. Too pathetic.

[Reese Kuehl]

This was Sick and Twisted

[Toni Lombardi]

The Beebo Brinker Chronicles have been capturing me in periodic spells where I sink into this world and live in it so deeply. I never anticipated the dramatic tonal shift this series would take. Admittedly, I read Beebo Brinker second after Odd Girl Out by accident and assumed that the series was an anthology; I was positively struck I read for the synopsis for I am a Woman and it became clear that an entire universe was before me. In many ways, Women in the Shadows feels like a gritty/“realistic” comic book arc where the everyone wears black leather, does drugs, and says mean shit to each other, l all while maintaining their decades long status quo. The cast’s tinges of internalized homophobia and misogyny all genuinely make for characters that feel deeper moral grayness and that ultimately makes them feel more realistic, I could’ve pulled Jack Mann right off the pages and smacked silly just like I could’ve done to Hal Jordan after he kills the Guardians of the Universe Beebo is still a bitch, Laura still thinks she can enchant straight people, and Jack Mann still knows how to throw it back. No one has grown as you would expect from the uplifting, call to arms conclusions the other books share. We’re in the days of future past, years have gone by but everyone is still wearing their flesh from 1956, with wounds festering. They are tortured and flawed. They carry their own shame across their lives and despite everyone sharing the same pain, no one can forgive each other because they’re too busy martyring themselves. Laura’s realization of self awareness comes at a jarringly chaotic time and despite Beebo committing some of writing’s most cardinal sins, I still find myself in her corner above all else. Hers is the ultimate tragedy, especially having read Beebo Brinker before this and having such high hopes for Beebo’s ability to actualize her queer joy.

Bannon attempts to put a spotlight on various intersections of racism in a way that is impressive to see for the time but it doesn’t always land by nature of the subjects tending to be racial caricatures themselves. There is a deeply transphobic overtone too, which is not called out by any character. The transphobia never goes beyond digging at Beebo’s implied boyishness but Laura does place a disgusting emphasis on biological purism that never really gets called out. Still, it seems Bannon feels sympathy for Beebo. She lets Beebo’s gender musings linger for just long enough for the read to touch that emotion, and then suddenly it’s whisked away. I can only assume this is a product of the time. What I wouldn’t give to talk about this to Bannon face to face, though I imagine I would be more met with an understanding that Beebo is a they/them butch as opposed to a budding Tboy.

In many ways, this novel reminds me of how much we have not changed. The community struggle by way of backbreaking contortions to fit a straight mold in order to find stability in the world was poignant. It was sad to see people deteriorate just by trying to hold onto each other. It’s sad to watch people painstakingly rationalize straightness just so they can feel like they’ll live to see tomorrow. It’s sad to watch people fail to see the truth just a little too late, and it’s sad to see them come to terms with their hurt years too late. Bannon admits in the afterward that some of this was written in reflection of the state of her own life, as well as her understanding of the world. She discusses the harrowing realizations that even in friendliest places in the country, there is sparse escape from criminalization, ritual humiliation, assaults, and the suicide attempts that come after. Bannon herself specifically writes “It would not be accurate to say I became embittered. But I did feel the need to explore some of these newly discovered imperfections in a place and a population I had always admired without reservation.”

For all of Laura’s own cruelty, I feel close to her. She is driven from her home harshly, it takes a lot of labour to undo that pain and she hurts a lot of people in the process of learning how to take walls down. She hates herself for how long it takes and she doesn’t realize the scale of the pain she causes back to her community until far after the fact. This is not a trait exclusive to this novel, but it is the strongest macro theme at play. For as easy as it is to focus on the sheer amount of negativity here, I think there are some important lessons and I am glad to have seen them through a lens of this time period. Bring back socialite culture. Repopularize cruising. Make the world a better place

[kit]

based on the reviews i expected this book to be a non-stop slog of misery porn with no redeeming factors and in the end it was fine? i think i need to stop reading reviews when they're all people complaining about Problematic Content as if bannon is condoning all the things that happen in this book.

anyway, bannon's writing keeps getting better. it was acerbic and quippy and just the right amount of cynical for such a disillusioned book. i expected the characters to be completely flanderized, and, yeah, beebo completely flew off the hinges, and jack reached new heights of moroseness, but it never felt as though bannon was doing this simply to create drama or punish characters as straight publishers would have wanted. moreover, this all contributed to ACTUAL CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. did the other reviewers miss that?? beebo cools down and doesn't take laura back because she knows they'd be miserable once more. jack sobers up and improves his life for himself and nobody else. laura...keeps making bad romantic choices but she does grow up a fair bit.

writing this book was a very admirable thing for bannon to do. it takes the blinders off for young, impressionable gay people who never left their small towns and only tasted the cosmopolitan life of the gay garden of eden that is greenwich village when they read paperbacks in drugstores. everyone in this book is miserable, but for once it's not because they're Dirty Gays it's because they're messy humans. the race stuff with tris aged badly in the sense that she's Exotic, but it never feels malicious. the only thing that i personally felt icky about is how this series constantly throws around the threat of rape/occasionally referring to any passionate encounter as an act of rape. that's just awful. ann bannon what the HELL.

yes i am getting far too invested in these pulp novels but on to the next one! beth is gonna be back! i don't miss her but i do want to read about beebo seducing her. gay rights.

[Abigail Espinal]

Okay, I know this novel was, to me, as bad as “I Am A Woman”, but I will still give credit where credit is due: this book, from the 1950s I must emphasize, is early representation of not only “lavender marriages” and parenthood between gay men and lesbian women, but also of interracial relationships and internalized homophobia. Quite an accomplishment indeed! Does it handle any of these subjects particularly well? Absolutely not, but I respect this entry in Bannon’s famed Greenwich Village series plenty even so. By far the darkest of the six entries, this novel contains several scenes uncomfortable enough to make your skin melt like a snowman in July. Beebo’s mental breakdown and many characters’ physical and sexual abuse play out in horrific detail. And if I’m being honest, I felt many of these shocking deviations to be exactly that: shock factor. At the end of the day, many did not serve a purpose, and at the end of the night, Laura and Beebo are just as irritating, unlikable, and ethically corrupt as the previous entry. I was really hoping to like them this time around, but it would appear after “Odd Girl Out” and “Beebo Brinker” (which was actually written later as a prequel), Laura and Beebo’s morals shot lower than Antarctica, disappearing without a trace. At least the book did neatly portray alcoholism and its prevalence in the queer community, so score one for this third entry! Anyway, to make a long story short, after reading Bannon’s other novels, I am certain that she is an expert writer with an eye for delightful melodrama, and she is fully capable of writing multiple historical masterpieces worthy of scholarly examination. Unfortunately, “Women in the Shadows” is not one of them.

[☆ susan ☆]

NOT THE STRAIGHTBAIT 😭😭💀
i dont rlly know how to judge it bc theres a lot of true in the way the book turns rotted, violent, stressful, pity and even disgusting cause theres an explanation for all of that —if youve previously read the 2 books before this one and made some kind of diagnosis on Laura's mental health (cause girl-)— but omggg i got through the same thing once again, theres a point in the book where everything is so fckd up that as the reader u really back tf up and wonder if u should even keep reading. 💀

now, LAURA 🙂, miss gurl wtffff are you even doing 🙂
she fr put herself into unnecessary shit that could have been avoided if she used at least 5% of her maturity, but its clear shes not mature AT ALL; and i mean, i do like complex characters, with a fckd up past that affects in a realistic way their behavior in their present but her stupidity is tiring honestly, cause the only growth shes made since odd girl out is that now she stands a little bit more for herself, but she still loooveees crumbs of affection, validation and praise from others without giving out anything for them. gotta love laura. 😻

wtv, idk if ill read journey to a woman (prob yes cause im weak af and the book is $2.30) but theres really nothing motivating me to do it. Laura and Jack together???? why cant Ann Bannon keep Laura being lesbian ?? wtfff, ughh 😭😭😭 she expecting a baby??? barely being able to keep herself alive??? barely learning boundaries, affective responsibility and with no money at all???
im losing my mind 👩🏽‍🦲

[Ryn McAtee]

I expected a steamy lesbian romance, instead I got some of the most toxic characters and relationships ever put to page. Having said that, I do appreciate Bannon’s attempt to portray a less idealized tableau of gay life in the Village of the 1950s, I think that was a noble goal in order to really capture both the beauty and dark underside of a same-sex love affair. However, these characters are so toxic, I hated them all and wanted none of them to end up together. It’s a terrible look when one of your main characters literally murders her own dog, beats herself up and claims to be raped, and the reader doesn’t believe for a second that actually happened because this woman has been completely unhinged from page one? It’s me, I’m the reader, and the woman who murdered her dog is the primary love interest. (I’m not going to put spoilers because honestly, I might not have read the book had I known.) Tris is the most interesting character in the entire book, and even as conniving as she is, I wanted to know more about her! Even though I didn’t really like the book, I’ve already begun to refer to one of my ex-girlfriends as Tris in my head, so this character will be living rent-free in my head for quite a while. In the end, I’m grateful for what this book and other lesbian novels of the time accomplished, and it was interesting to say the least. I was always engaged reading it, and Bannon’s prose is quite enjoyable. I’m glad I read it but I’ll never be reading it again.

[Fynn Grindle]

I have never been more perplexed in my life.

Reading this was a roller coaster that I never wanted to ride again. It's not a bad book, necessarily, but I physically cannot put myself through reading this again.

Reading to analyze things such as themes, characters, behaviors, and the reflection and interpretation of the queer spheres/relationships at the time? *Incredibly* interesting and ripe for commentary. Women in the Shadows was an assigned reading for one of my WGS/Queer Studies classes and, thematically, fit extremely well and was a fascinating text to analyze using various frameworks and lenses.

But...

Reading this to simply *read* it? Painful. There were many times I wasn't sure if I wanted to throw up, cry, or toss the book. But, then again, I highly doubt this book was initially penned for explicit joy or a particularly satisfying read.

So, in conclusion: *awesome* to write an essay about or annotate. But I would not read this for leisure unless I liked to torture myself.

[Commander]

I'm going to follow Tara's example here and not rate this book.

The writing is amazing as always, it's just that since I read the prequel before all the other books, I have a different idea of who Beebo is, and Jack. I was more attached to Beebo than to Laura seeing as it was the book I started with and so this book came as a shock to me, the ending did not make me happy, nor did the events... I don't even know if the next book will feature Beebo at this point, I mean the books are named after her but it seems to me she can become quite the background character sometimes.

The events that happened in this book seem quite realistic to me, the abuse, the alcoholism, even the ending seems quite realistic even by today's standards. I guess I'm just a sucker for happy endings for lesbians, though.

[Ezra]

My god, this got really HEAVY and I decided to set it aside for a little bit. Unfortunately, just not super rewarding at all. Not a lot of redeeming things taking place at all. Not sure how to feel about certain characters’ depictions to be completely honest. I lowkey missed the good ol’ days when we were just gay panicking on a double date 😭 Still glad to have read it but yeah, kinda doesn’t hit at all the way the other two have especially Odd Girl Out. My copy doesn’t have the next chronological Beebo Brinker which is Journey to a Woman :,( BUT I found it on the Internet Archive so that’s where I’ll be 🫡 And then onto the prequel which is Beebo’s story, who is unfortunately not a character I’m looking forward to reading about in depth but we all know I’m gonna read it anyways. We’re in too deep, chat. We’re in the fucking trenches of investment at this point 🫵

[Erin]

"These motifs may have been a bit clumsy in the handling" Bannon says in her afterword to a more recent edition. And true enough that is. The characters in this episode of the Beebo Brinker books are very much struggling. And Bannon is struggling a bit to convey that. Self-hating gays are everywhere. Laura is still a kind of chaotic mess. And spousal abuse and toxic relationships are dealt with in a very intense yet not very satisfying way. I came out hating pretty much every single character concerned, and intensely hating the only relationship to survive the book. So this one is pure misery. But it's not without historical importance, given its messy attempt to address issues of race, addiction, and spousal abuse. So reading it wasn't entirely without merit. Just without enjoyment.

[S.B. Stokes]

Like others this book was a bit of a trek to muddle through but the new afterword by Bannon saves it. The relationships portrayed in this book were MESSY and I’d never wish to be either Beebo or Laura but the afterword gives it a new lens to look at this book through. It’s like a history lesson. I was gonna give 1 star but the afterword saved it for me. Maybe 4 stars is too generous so I’ll take it down to 3 but is an intriguing read (like reality tv and Jerry Springer)

Note: Had allergies and took a benadryl while writing this so it’s probably reading as nonsense lol

[J.Rats]

El tercer libro de las #beebobrinkerchronicles . UN DRAMÓN. Trigger Warnings pa’tol mundo, pero como dice la autora, fue ese momento pre-stonewall en el que el gobierno convirtió al colectivo lgbtq en un blanco fácil para absolutamente todos los estratos de la sociedad. Lo recomiendo si estás recorriendo la saga y quieres saber qué les pasa a las protas de las historias. También si te apetece indagar un poco sobre cómo vivían nuestras elder queers antes de los movimientos de lucha por la liberación lgbtq y antirracistas. Le doy: una ciudad por la noche 🌃 y dos arcoíris 🌈🌈

[Wendy Rouse]

I enjoy Ann Bannon's whole Beebo Brinker series, but I couldn't get through the negativity of this, the darkest book in the series. Aptly named Women in the Shadows, this is just one book in a series that chronicles the lives of several lesbian characters living in New York City. Check out the other books for sure, this one is mostly sad and depressing.