Product Description

Close Calls presents twenty-one new stories that reflect the complexity and richness of lesbian life today, exploring a wide range of topics such as family, love and loss, children, violence, and sex. Susan Fox Rogers has brought together both established and new writers, including Ruthann Robson, Donna Allegra, Gwendolyn Bikis, Linda Smukler, Wickie Stamps, Anna Livia, among many others. Close Calls showcases the innovative and provocative writing that makes lesbian fiction today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2011507 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com Review
Twenty years ago lesbian fiction thrived in a number of independently produced, alternative literary journals. Many of those journals have since folded, leaving fewer places for short fiction to appear. Susan Fox Rogers's Close Calls: New Lesbian Fiction has remedied this situation to a large degree. Short stories from established writers such as Ruthann Robson and Anna Livia and newcomers Wickie Stamps and Rebecca Lavine range from first love to murderous rage, from deconstructed fairy tale to postmodern speculative fiction. While all of the stories emerge from a lesbian experience, they are as varied as the individuals who wrote them.

From Publishers Weekly
"What is a lesbian story?" So asks Rogers in the introduction to this anthology, the sixth she has edited (Sportsdykes; Another Wilderness; etc.). Requiring only the simple criteria that the works be written by a woman and feature a lesbian character, she lets the stories themselves respond to the question. Happily, no restrictive answer emerges: the stories in this collection encompass all the possibilities of the form in general, yielding some delightful results. They represent a panoply of experience, voice and style, from the voice of a stripper who's "a drag queen trapped in a woman's body" in Rebecca Lavine's "Skin Queen" to a modern-day Cinderella's misunderstood and not so evil stepsister in Kathryn Kingsbury's "Wicked Stepsisters." Barbara Wilson's "Still Life," about a watercolor painter's desire to paint her life "wet on wet to the edges," and Anna Livia's "Lightning Dances Over the Prairie Like Lust at a Nightclub," in which a misplaced San Franciscan finds herself blown Wizard of Oz-like to the Midwest, are particularly memorable. With very few exceptions, the tales here are of high literary quality. There is no shortage of anthologies of lesbian writing, but Rogers's success in illuminating contemporary lesbian life in all its diversity should secure a place for Close Calls among the best of the crop.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Editor Rogers (Solo: On Her Own Adventure, LJ 5/1/96) covers every lesbian genre and pastiche thereof and presents themes that could well become genres. Classics include the detective story ("When You Wish Upon the Moon"), the fairy tale ("Wicked Stepsisters"), the tribal saga ("Wild Parrots Squalling Somewhere"), the cautionary tale ("Close Calls; "Birding in Utah"; "Mykonos"). Among the new types are the nonmonogamy narrative ("Nothing in Common"), the therapy session ("Anhedonia"), the account of a sex worker whose occupation is a source of independence and self-respect ("Choices" and "Skin Deep"), and the tale of reluctant mothering ("Diego and Bob"). Some of the authors (Anna Livia, Barbara Wilson, Ruthann Robson) already have works in your local women's or lesbian and gay bookstore; most don't. Rogers's criterion for selection was unpublished stories that kept her glued to her seat?in this case, an appropriate description for a collection that is without exception well written, original, and compelling. Highly recommended.?Ina Rimpau, Newark P.L.,
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Evocative and poetic.
The reviewers have said it well: "Rogers's criterion for selection was unpublished stories that kept her glued to her seat -- in this case, an appropriate description for a collection that is without exception well written, original, and compelling."(Library Journal)"'. . .[T]he stories in this collection encompass all the possibilities of the form in general, yielding some delightful results.... With very few exceptions, the tales here are of high literary quality."'(Publisher's Weekly). . ."Close Calls provides a revealing survey of lesbian lives -- young and old; black, white, and Asian -- and deserves to find an audience of both lesbian and mainstream readers." (Booklist)

Eclectic reading
I have to say that I was greatly impressed by the diverse content of this anthology. I bought Close Calls six months ago, and have read it several times since. In many of the stories, I find things in the main character's personality, life, or problems that I can relate to. I would recommend it firsthand for a good read - lesbian, straight, or otherwise - as it offers glimpses into aspects of our lives that even some of us would not think of.