After Delores

by Sarah Schulman

This hilarious, unpredictable, sexy novel is a fascinating journey into the storefronts, underground clubs, and back alleys of New York's Lower East Side lesbian subculture. And Sarah Schulman, writing in sharp, immediate, insightful prose, has created a wonderfully modern, totally original heroine.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Lesbian, Mystery, Novels, New York

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Sarah Schulman is a longtime AIDS and queer activist, and a cofounder of the MIX Festival and the ACT UP Oral History Project. She is a playwright and the author of seventeen books, including the novels The Mere Future, Shimmer, Rat Bohemia, After Delores, and People in Trouble, as well as nonfiction works such as The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life during the Reagan/Bush Years, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, and Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America. She is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at The City University of New York, College of Staten Island.

Reviews

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you enjoy novels where the protagonist dreams of killing her ex and/or the ex's new lover, this might be the book for you.

It makes absolutely no sense to me how someone can go from loving someone to wanting them dead.

I know it happens, crimes of passion are a real thing, but I'll never understand how true love can morph into hatred and thus I didn't connect with this protagonist at all.

Not a whole lot happens either, but it was a story written well enough that I kept turning the pages.

And then there's these two little gems:

“Under capitalism, people with new ideas serve people with old ones. Under communism, it’s exactly the same, only you don’t get tips.”

"If you’re talking to a woman and she looks you in the eye and really sees you and listens to what you say, then you know she’s gay. It works every time.”

[Berengaria · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

short review for busy readers: a novel from the late 80s about lesbian culture in New York City. We follow a young woman in a state of despair and emotional trauma after having been dumped by her girlfriend for a richer, more socially prestigious woman. Nightmarish, violent and with a meandering, sometimes difficult to follow plot, the novel shows off many of the author's beefs with the gay community.

in detail:
I've taken up the habit of reading another book by an author immediately after finishing the first one, if I really thought the first was good. And so it was with Schulman's Maggie Terry, which I rather enjoyed.

This one is a much earlier novel and one could even see the protag as an early, immature version of Maggie Terry. They share many of the same problems -- alcoholism, an emotionally manipulative ex-girlfriend who dumped them cold, and the vague interest in solving/avenging the death of a young woman.

Could just be Schulman's shtick.

What is different, is that this novel doesn't always make too much sense. It's nightmarish -- as in dreamscape + upsetting -- and has little to no real plot. It also paints a portrait of a gay community that fulfils all the stereotypes...that aren't stereotypes, according to Schulman.

Living in dangerous slums. Random, unprotected sex with strangers you just met. Sexual double standards: demanding sexual loyalty from a partner while you routinely cheat on them. Falling in insta-love every week with a new woman and thinking it's for real. Emotional discord that becomes physical violence (gay-on-gay beatings, bone-breaking and murder). Casual and happy abuse of alcohol and drugs.

This emotionally-overwrought horror show Schulman attempts to explain in the preface like this...

If no one loves you, or cares if you live or die, then you take huge risks with your life. If your family doesn't support you as gay, then why should you treat other gay people any better than you are treated? Your family, community and nation emotionally spit on you, so you emotionally spit on others like you. Who cares?

She believes this is wrong, but you'd not be able to tell that from this novel. Only in her later fiction and non-fiction work does she point the finger at this immature, nihilistic approach and call it out.

"After Delores" might be a true novel in that it does capture the feeling of a certain time, place and community, but it's not an enjoyable one. Maggie Terry is much better.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, I think that every thinking reading person should own this book. It is just about one of the most vivid executions of heartache and style I have ever read, and I've read it a few times now--actually, it improves with re-readings (always a good sign).

I still remember being drawn in at first by the rather intriguing cover, and then being absolutely blown away by the poignancy, the detail, and the sheer audacity of the prose, disguised as a "murder mystery." Yes, and Othello is a play about interracial marriage.

Find it, get it, read it.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I whipped through this, a pleasure. And you can see Schulman thinking through the issues at play in Conflict Is Not Abuse -- the problem of lack of accountability, the overstatement of harm, the abuser becoming victim... all these ideas possibly more enthralling here, I think, because we're not told what to think. The premise is a narrator contemplating the desire to turn the emotional violence of being left for another woman into real violence...It's a lesbian breakup revenge novel with a murder mystery in the middle of it. Notably, after the narrator ends up committing a revenge murder (not of her ex), there's no police investigation to speak of, nobody comes looking, nobody cares about these disposable people in mid-1980s NYC. A queer intervention into noir.

[Macartney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best breakup novel I've ever read. Schulman maps the depression and anger and sadness of a breakup onto a surrealistic murder mystery set in a 1980s East Village. This is a lesbian quasi-street kids story littered with quirky characters and situations, but always, always rooted in truth. Schulman's worldview is unlike any other (maybe Delany): her primacy of working class narratives and anti-capitalist perspectives informs every page. This is an early novel for her but the control of her gifts, even as a young writer, is astounding.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as breakup anthems go, this is the book equivalent of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” Rage, venom, and despair on automatic repeat. The main character is a hilarious, heartbreaking train wreck. The novel kind of is too. That’s mostly a compliment.

[Bek (MoonyReadsByStarlight) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bizarre and deeply chaotic, this is a surreal tale of heartbreak and deep personal mess. I have so many questions but it is still so compelling. Sarah Schulman's fiction continues to intrigue me. It also makes me more excited for her stuff that seems to be the more noir/detective type.

Looking though the other reviews, I saw that some took note of how this relates or could have been meditations that led to Conflict is Not Abuse. That makes me want to read that even more and come back to some of these novels again to look at the interpersonal issues and violence.

[Gabriella · Rating 3 out of 5]

The curse of Sarah Schulman strikes again!!! Sometimes the only way to end your reading slump is to spend time with the worst lesbian in the world. (I am granting her this title after my comments discussion with Bonnie about Biography of X.) Like it’s indisputable that the lady sucks as a human being, but when I want to feel something and not just blindly flip through the pages, I know she’s my girl. After Delores shocked me out of my reading slumber, thanks to an incredibly grimy narrative experience. I guess I’m saying that despite all my hatereads of authors who are weird for weird’s sake, sometimes provocation has its place?!?!?

Schulman’s intro to the 25th anniversary edition of this book is really telling. Of course such an awful person would summarize the milieu they came up in as such: “Being unaccountable to another lesbian was perhaps the only dominant culture behavior available. So everyone just stood by and let it happen. They simply didn’t believe that lesbians should be accountable for their actions.” (3-4) It’s really uncomfortable to read about a world with these terms of engagement, and I kept being unsure if I was “allowed” to enjoy it or not. After a while, I was taking it as a tongue-in-cheek sort of narrative—like when the author is fantasizing of killing her ex’s new partner, it’s in a Marty in Ozarks telling Wendy his favorite moment in life was hearing her affair partner’s skull crash onto the pavement. It's meant to be hyperbolic for the viewer but not actually abusive for the character, just like a sign of a spookily charged world where the usual codes of conduct have been disengaged.

I settled into that lens of this world, and then mostly ended up being entertained. There are certainly some items that don’t age well—words we would not use today, age gaps that are now firmly a no-go, that sort of thing. But still, many parts of this are more recognizable than you would think. White lesbians in the 1980s, like white lesbians in the 2020s, loveeeee an unhinged sex fantasy!!! Like why is everybody hoping that their ex vomits on their new partner and then french kisses them right afterward?!? Why is that arousing?!? I’m confused. Jokes aside, the interplay between danger and attraction in this story remains familiar, as does the characters’ smugness about being the sorts of people who can “make it” in New York City.

My final interests here were in Schulman’s introductory remarks about the state of lesbian publishing. She claims that even though there are lesbians working in the literary industry, there aren’t many lesbian books. In defense of After Delores, she contends that “I don’t want to live in a world in which the majority of lesbian representations are family-oriented, celebrity-focused or (shudder), cutesy.” (7) 12 years after the 25 years after, I mostly agree, especially when it comes to the authors I most want to read. There are a handful of Black lesbian romance novels being published each year, but little else in other genres. I’d love to see more lesbian historical fiction, mystery, contemporary lit, you name it!! I know the authors and book concepts are out there, and they are just being rejected by the Big 5. I can only hope that this will continue to change in coming years, and continue to appreciate the rare gems as I encounter them. Until then, I will be trying to explore more indie publishers, and occasionally digging oddball novels like this one out of the crate!!!

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another book-gift, presented as "a cult classic or something". It's a lesbian noir/mystery from the POV of a drunk with a broken heart. Unpredictable, funny, with some damn fine sentences along the way.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

More important than the plain fact that I enjoyed reading the book, which I did, is that in reading it, I figured out why I read so much about Ed Koch era New York. It's recent past enough for me to feel a sense of continuity with my own generation, yet distant enough to glamorize. And like: sure. But the urgency of my interest is that I've been reading what is manifestly history as latent prophecy.

The unnamed narrator of After Delores has this misguided sense of justice that is really a coping mechanism for her heartbreak. Her need for distraction sets her off on a murder mystery that creates a lesbian pulp novel within the framework of an emotionally complex story about lesbians failing at being accountable to one another. There are no consequences, no reasons to be emotionally responsible, and positive examples are few and far between. You move to New York from wherever so you can be Out, but you have to do it in a festering hole of poverty, drug addiction, and cool art. Maybe fewer people try to kill you for being gay or a woman or both, but they still don't care if you live or die. So you're an asshole to the ones who do.

The narrator has a violent obsession with her eponymous ex girlfriend who was, you know, an asshole. She continues to imagine a future with Delores based on their past together, while living in denial of the present reality of Delores changing her mind and dumping her for a yuppie.

New York is dumping everyone for yuppies, yet people continue to cling to this supposedly lost ideal New York that was, you know, a dump. Times have changed and so have the dumps. Now it's not unlike those dumps in Staten Island or off the New Jersey Turnpike: covered in turf panels, mounds of rotting trash obfuscated by the illusion of rolling hills. Manhattan's the same way, it's just got stores instead of sod.

The narrator's inability to Deal with the reality of her and Deloris's relationship tempers her darker impulses to destroy the life of someone she used to love. Fear is the most powerful emotion she wields, and in the end she admits she "feels close to people when [she's] afraid of them." So I leverage the only weapon I have, the unsavory history of 1980s New York, by inscribing it as dystopian fiction about its future. I guess I miss Delores too.

[Bryan Cebulski]

Unfortunately, really scattershot unreliable narrator novels like this don't do much for me. And I'm not sure if it's the same in every edition but the Arsenal Pulp Press version was riddled with typos and formatting errors. Still has some of those bangin' lines and amusingly bizarre situations that Schulman is so good at delivering.

[lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

grimy & violent & sorta mean but also contained some moments that made me laugh out loud, some exceptionally lovely prose, and some perennially relatable dyke behavior/sentiment

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

AFTER DELORES what? More Sarah Schulman. In this novel, that begins and ends with a gun, she captures the NYC of the mid-late ‘80s as I saw it. It made me nostalgic for the place and the people. I knew them. They were me. But this was more than a pop song from childhood that you hated when young but now resonates with memories so tied to the era that forever will its power surge beyond mere chords. Though there is that. More so, Schulman writes about people who haven't lived in the pages of books. The emotions are universal, even if coming from a mostly lesbian cast of characters: lost, longing, love. All those L words. But the color of their hair, the cut of their drugs, the drudgery of their work is unique. Maybe I need to read more, but the time between post-punk and grunge is a wasteland of disinterest and change, seminal as transition to where we are now, and woefully underexposed in literature. It can't return. Not in New York. Perhaps elsewhere. But who would want it? Why am I so drawn to them and their stories, beyond Schulman's deft touch as a writer, I cannot say. It's in that inarticulate expression that I find meaningful.

[Mckenzie Eastman · Rating 2 out of 5]

i mean to start the book version i read was really wide and kind of felt like an i formation pamphlet book… so not a good start. secondly, in the front it says “a rare insightful look into the lesbian mind”.. bullshit… its an insight into the mind of someone who is mentally unwell. i give it a 2.6. was not wowed or amazing. but i suppose some interesting characterisation, Christopher nolan should turn this i to a queer film

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

lesbian love triangle violence ! women who are always lying !

[hanita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love dykes and we will always be funny

[danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was some really memorable writing in this book, not to mention a truly memorable misanthropic protagonist. I really like how distinctive Schulman's writing is, and how different it feels from the nonfiction I'm reading at the same time. The writing in Conflict is Not Abuse certainly shares some interest - of finding the non-normativity even within queer social worlds, for example - but still feels a lot more restrained in some ways than this, where everything is really left on the page from violent impulses to desperate longing to outright violence.

Because I'm always searching for points of reference for some reason, this book reminded me a bit of Eileen Myles' memoirs, in particular Inferno, which also describes a range of lets say interesting NYC characters getting entangled in intense ways in 70s/80s new york, as well as some sex scenes that feel genuinely transgressive (if thats the word) in the way that they're rendered, as opposed to a lot of scenes of intimacy in books that feel if not cliched than at least working within a certain set of expectations and vocabulary. There is an altogether different vocabulary here! And I found that really compelling.

Desire in this book is a bitter, destructive, and at times ugly thing, but it never feels dishonest or feel-bad per se. The main character feels so fully realized - as when she talks about being one of the people in the world who doesn't understand fashion and so clings to any garment that seems to 'succeed,' like Delores's shirt - that I was completely brought into her web of relationships and feelings towards the various characters, even if those feelings were sometimes cruel or violent.

It's also worth noting that this book is just sharp, funny, and very well-observed. The diner where she works is a great setting, and though it features only glancingly in the book there are some great observations about acting and theatre. Some stray things I really liked:

- "That's what stayed in my mind all night, tossing and turning on the couch. Charlotte doesn't smoke. How could I ever be close with a woman who doesn't smoke? No bitter taste of tobacco on her tongue when I suck it. No late-night waves of smoke hanging on our shoulders. No red tip smoldering in the dark. No passing the butt from lip to lip. She would never love my smell the way a nicotine addict craved me. That's when I wondered if Charlotte was only my diversion, and I was nothing to her. But that thought was too bleak to possibly accept."

- "that's what I remember best, the rain. First, it started to land on me softly like kisses, and then it started to sing in an even, settling sort of way. It gave me something to do, which was listen to it, and a place to hide, which was inside it."

- "the only thing that happened in the last two decades that made any sense to me at all was Patti Smith. When Patti Smith came along, even I got hip, but then she went away"

- "There were a lot of offensive people living in TriBeCa, which was, in general, an offensive neighborhood."

Anyway I enjoyed this book! The one part that maybe didn't work as consistently for me was the overarching plot of the murder investigation. I enjoy the way it unexpectedly became a bigger part of the book than I was expecting, but I don't think it came together at the end and I don't think it really needed to be this narrative spine when all of the little side interactions were so interesting on their own, but who am I to say! Overall I really liked it, and am excited to read more of Sarah Schulman's fiction.

[maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

kind of the most incredible opening line in a novel of all time?

easy home run of a book for me. the more messy, unpalatable, and cruel a lesbian protagonist is the more i'm able to enjoy the book. long live the art of lesbian autofiction <3

also obsessed w this quote from sarah schulman that is what got me to pick up one of her books:
"I don’t want to live in a world in which the majority of lesbian representations are family-oriented, celebrity-focused or (shudder) cutesy. Do you?”

[Grace Palumbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for book club- it was sad and kind of nihilistic. I need to stop reading sad books. I think there would’ve been more to take from it if I had been in a state where I was able to absorb anything else from a sad book.

[liv · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh DEEPLY obsessed with this i love dykes more than anything

[Abbey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had gay people and lesbians in NYC in the 80’s and scenes in New Jersey, so really what else do you need? It made me think and was engaging and I’m happy with that.

[Madeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

raises the bar for inventive, sexy, fun, and weird lesbian art. the writing is so lush and does such a good job showing, not telling, its settings you feel like you’re in a top-tier noir movie (also a longstanding dyke tradition in the vein of patricia highsmith or Bound)

[Madison Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading a couple of Sarah Schulman’s non-fiction works, I came across perhaps her most revered novel, “After Delores”, unexpectedly on my library’s shelf. I grabbed it, eager to see how her prose was in fiction, and I was impressed. Given her staunch politics, I wrongly suspected that this novel would be all head, no heart, but I was mistaken. I’ve never been dumped before (somehow), but I have been rejected, and I can relate to the narrator’s abruptly fluctuating love and hate for Delores. (This novel proves that apathy, not hate, is the opposite of love.) I read this book much faster than I had expected. It was short, granted, but it was also very readable, with a good pace and fast action with enough emotionality to reel me in completely. The protagonist was, in my eyes, something of a prototype for the Otessa Moshfegh protagonists of late: angry, sexual, shameful, and deeply craving love. Beautifully broken protagonists have their place, but so do the bitterly broken. There’s a scene toward the end where the narrator gets a solid slice of revenge and even though you consciously know that she is being selfish and irrational, it feels so, so good. I imagine this novel was a major breath of fresh air when it came out, given its honesty as well as its frank lesbian representation, but it still feels like a breath of fresh air now (dated references aside, but that can be forgiven).

My only issues were that (vague spoiler), one character seems to assault another and it’s not really explained or confronted, which felt off, and the core mystery of the novel, while compelling, was a bit too sidelined. Yes, our narrator thinks about the mystery throughout the novel, but it often plays second-fiddle to her other troubles. I guess that’s okay, but it wasn’t as taut as I’d expected.

An aside, I read the 2009 reprint and it was rife with typos. They weren’t on every page, but they came up frequently enough to be very distracting. “Delores” was even misspelled once. The typos made this intelligent, respected novel feel like it had been self-published (Not to knock self publishers, but you know what I mean).

I would read this again, and I look forward to Schulman’s other books, fiction and not.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kept trying to figure out what this reminded me of and I finally did on like the last page. This book completely evokes Holden Caulfield if he were a lonely, alcoholic lesbian woman trying to avenge a murder in a lower east side noir written in 1988. It’s as entertaining as that sounds. It’s really a character study. Very enjoyable. Sarah Schulman can clearly do anything.

[Annie Blum · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a strong feeling that the specifics of this book will not stay with me for a long time; it is very brief and some of the vignettes felt a bit half-baked. However, the emotional ride of this little book was very enthralling, and that is something that will linger in my memory.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was nice! well not actually, it was bitter and a bit dark. But very colorful characters and great writing. It felt more like scattered descriptions of 80s nyc lesbians being crazy than a particularly gripping plotline, but I was ok with it

[Camille Roylance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad, lonely lesbian in New York in the 80’s just kind of walking around the city in the summer. She’s drunk, she’s vengeful and she has a gun. Everyone has a gun and hates men!

[Vega Royer · Rating 4 out of 5]

en vrai 3.5. deja la traduction par un homme gache le livre mais j’ai pas trouve la version anglaise
il y a des moments trop trop beaux ms juste je trouve ca manque de structure parfois j’oublais grv ou on en etait…..love the lesbian sex description par contre 😪🤘

[Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book blew me away.

[Abigail]

Truly have never read anything like this