Amanda

by Paula Christian

Christian, Paula

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sad to say, this one is a real mess, even by the standards of the lesbian pulps. It’s about a lesbian pulp writer—this is the meta aspect that originally drew me in—who has never wanted to sleep with a woman, but then she does, but then at the end she learns her lesson and reverts to heterosexuality. Mostly there’s just too much writing about the writing process. The scenes of falling in love and going to a gay bar and trying to have sex with another woman are all fine—goofy, wildly involved with simplistic Freudian takes on lesbianism, and not that well written, but fine. There’s just too much other stuff that is not compelling.

A taste of the wild Freud takes, speaking the morning after having sex with a woman for the first time: “I wanted to kiss her everywhere. I wanted to possess her, to climb into her womb and nestle there.” Okay, Paula!! The author is ambivalent about lesbianism and made some statements suggesting that she would like psychiatry to find a way to make it optional, for those not interested in the life.

It seems that Paula Christian (Yvonne Macmanus) lived in New Haven, CT for a time in the 1980s, and the copy of Amanda I have is a reissue by her own press, Timely Books, based in New Milford CT. Of interest to me, if no one else!