A Rage Within

by March Hastings

Sex Kitty is happily married to a young, virile man...but she's never experienced a desire that scorches her from head to toe...or the great, body-shaking climax that other women have...... so she goes looking for it, a personal and physical journey that will change her life. "Her writing is amazingly good, far too good for 'sleaze.' March Hastings ups the ante, and is on par with Joyce Carol Oates’s 1960s work. Her prose is smooth, her dialogue top notch, her charcters and their situations believable, if we want to believe the angsts of the upper crust of society." Those Sexy Vintage Sleaze Books “March Hastings” was one of the pseudonyms (along with Laura Duchamp, Viveca Ives, and Alden Stowe) of Sally M. Singer, a lesbian writer born in 1930s and the author of more than 130 novels. She is undoubtedly best-known for her string of ground-breaking, lesbian-themed, sexy pulp paperbacks in the 1950s and early 1960s, including Three Women, The Third Theme, Veil of Torment , and The Demands of the Flesh . She wrote many other sexy novels as Hastings, not all of them with a lesbian theme. However, by the late-60s/early 70s, the “March Hastings” pseudonym was co-opted by her publisher and became a house name for many different authors penning lurid paperbacks, diluting and confusing her early legacy as an influential author of lesbian pulp and straight erotic fiction.

146 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Writing in New York City in the 1950s and 60s, March Hastings, a pseudonym of Sally Singer, was one of the most prolific authors of the lesbian pulp era. She now lives in Florida.

Reviews

[Nik Maack · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would guess the author was told there needed to be five sex scenes and she could do whatever she wanted with the rest of the pages. So, to amuse herself, she wrote up a somewhat elaborate psychological profile of the main character. Kitty is sort of a nymphomaniac, sort of bored, dependent on others for her happiness, can't decide what she wants from one minute to the next.

The book is basically a trashy Harlequin Romance, without romance, some sex, and no story.

Dirk is a doctor Kitty eventually sleeps with. At first I was wondering if his detachment is an attempt to help Kitty. But it turns out he's maybe a sociopath.

This book makes little to no sense, rambles endlessly, ends abruptly, and no one will ever read it and come here looking for a review.

Near the end, Kitty scores a job looking after a handicapped man who can't get out of bed. I assumed she would eventually sleep with him too. Nope. I actually wondered if that was why she was hired. That doesn't play out at all, which is odd. With almost no effort, she gets the job, and immediately starts thinking of it as her salvation.Which is insane.

It's a weird book. I'd give it one star except it is oddly well written and somewhat interesting as a character study, even as nothing happens.

It abruptly ends on a ridiculous cliffhanger. Will her husband take her back? We will never know. It felt like that resolution was some kind of moral code requirement -- like they wouldn't let the book be published unless the slutty lady can possibly receive redemption.