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Readers'
Comments - Selects Her Own
A wonderfully unusual novella that every questioning
teen and, even more importantly, their family needs to read.
I adored Pert with her continuously amazing rich language
and her solid sense of what love really is; stripped down
from the world's complex expectations.
Patricia
Osage, SanFrancisco, CA
(a
bonafide former commune lesbian, complete with a right-wing
Catholic daddy.)
Selects Her Own is an unblinking look
at uncommon choices. As is so often the case, the decision
to come out is one beginning, emboldening, beckoning us to
think deeper, live richer. The story is not one of coming
out of the closet; rather, it lights the way of two characters,
on different paths, coming out of the darkness, finding themselves.
Caroline
Lackey, SanFrancisco, CA
Author of East Side Ice & Fuel
Selects Her Own gives the reader a glimpse into ways
of living foreign to most people, though the issues the characters
have to deal with are familiar to all: love, and its lack, and
loss. The author has made a credible dip into these strange
waters. Perk and Cosy are vivid and likable from the first.
This book made me want to move to a commune, become a lesbian,
and buy a horse.
Hoyt
DeVane, Columbia MO
I did buy your book at the Nook and read it. It's very good,
and I enjoyed it a lot. Perk is especially vivid and endearing,
and it was good to read a story where the main characters
are different enough to each need their own style of living,
yet committed enough to make an ongoing relationship work.
You did a fine job of building the tension as to which one
would have to "give," and then worked out a way
for both of them to find what they needed.
I did have one problem, when Perk on p. 70 says that she
"never wanted to fall for a bi" because she figures
they would never be satisfied with one sex or the other. As
you know, I'm bi, and while I did think for awhile that it
would be difficult to never be with a woman again, I've been
monogamous with Fran (a man) now for a long time and don't
see that changing. And I know lots of other bisexuals who
are in monogamous committed relationships with either a woman
or a man. Of course there are bisexuals who are prone to go
back and forth, or who manage more than one relationship (as
I did once many years ago, for a few delightful months). But
that's as true, I think, for heterosexuals, gay men, and lesbians;
some folks of each persuasion are more settled and/or monogamous
than others. Anyway, I'm a bit sensitive to the stereotype
of bisexuals as untrustworthy -- we get hit from both sides
of the orientation aisle.
Anyway, in my opinion you have become a very good writer
and I will look forward to your next book.
Joan
Walsh, Durham NC
Claire’s
response:
I'm so sorry to have put something hurtful into my novel.
It was a quote from a gay man who'd had some unhappy experiences
a few years back, and it didn't occur to me that it was a
painful thing often said to bi people. As a person with three
failed marriages, I'm no one to talk about other people changing
partners. Thanks for your permission to post your response
on my website; it will give comfort to others who have the
same reaction and will inform all readers that Perk -- young
and inexperienced -- is wrong about that.
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