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Overview
In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet Jones keeps the love she shares with her best friend Marie a secret. It's not easy being gay in Washington, DC, in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a newfound ambition to write and publish her own story, she risks exposing herself--and Marie--to a danger all too real. Sixty-two years later, Abby Zimet can't stop thinking about her senior project and its subject--classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Between the pages of her favorite book, the stresses of Abby's own life are lost to the fictional hopes, desires and tragedies of the characters she's reading about. She feels especially connected to one author, a woman who wrote under the pseudonym "Marian Love," and becomes determined to track her down and discover her true identity. In this novel told in dual narratives, New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley weaves together the lives of two young women connected across generations through the power of words. A stunning story of bravery, love, how far we've come and how much farther we have to go.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781335012906
- ISBN-10: 1335012907
- Publisher: Harlequin Teen
- Publish Date: November 2018
- Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.05 pounds
- Page Count: 416
- Reading Level: Ages 13-UP
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Pulp
High school senior Abby’s home life in Washington, D.C., is a mess best left untouched, and her love life? Ugh. She’s still reeling from her breakup with her ex-girlfriend, Linh, and trying to figure out how they can go back to being friends. Little things like her college applications have been forgotten altogether. When she must improvise her senior creative writing project on the fly, she randomly lands on 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. As she starts researching in order to write her own modern novel in the same style, she becomes obsessed with one pseudonymous author (known as Marian Love) and decides to find her real identity.
Abby’s story in the present dovetails with another tale set in 1955, when closeted teen Janet Jones finds one of those same novels. In the 1950s, those pulpy novels are required to have tragic endings or a spontaneous renunciation of same-sex love, and it seems as though Janet’s own story is headed that way. The best friend she’s in love with isn’t prepared to lose everything, and running away seems like the only option.
Author Robin Talley (Lies We Tell Ourselves) contrasts Abby’s life in present-day D.C., where she’s comfortably out to her friends and busy protesting Trump-era policies, with Janet’s in 1955, when even a rumor of homosexuality is grounds for investigation under the pretext of exposing Communists. This comparison makes Pulp both a mystery and a history lesson, and it’s quite moving. Talley’s afterword highlights some of the real history—complete with lists of real lesbian pulp fiction authors and their published titles—that underlies Janet’s fictional story. It’s remarkable how far gay rights and U.S. culture have come, but Talley notes that you can still be fired or evicted for being gay in 28 states today.
Pulp neatly moves between two similar girls’ very different worlds and offers a pointed reminder that history is never that far behind us.
This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
Pulp
High school senior Abby’s home life in Washington, D.C., is a mess best left untouched, and her love life? Ugh. She’s still reeling from her breakup with her ex-girlfriend, Linh, and trying to figure out how they can go back to being friends. Little things like her college applications have been forgotten altogether. When she must improvise her senior creative writing project on the fly, she randomly lands on 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. As she starts researching in order to write her own modern novel in the same style, she becomes obsessed with one pseudonymous author (known as Marian Love) and decides to find her real identity.
Abby’s story in the present dovetails with another tale set in 1955, when closeted teen Janet Jones finds one of those same novels. In the 1950s, those pulpy novels are required to have tragic endings or a spontaneous renunciation of same-sex love, and it seems as though Janet’s own story is headed that way. The best friend she’s in love with isn’t prepared to lose everything, and running away seems like the only option.
Author Robin Talley (Lies We Tell Ourselves) contrasts Abby’s life in present-day D.C., where she’s comfortably out to her friends and busy protesting Trump-era policies, with Janet’s in 1955, when even a rumor of homosexuality is grounds for investigation under the pretext of exposing Communists. This comparison makes Pulp both a mystery and a history lesson, and it’s quite moving. Talley’s afterword highlights some of the real history—complete with lists of real lesbian pulp fiction authors and their published titles—that underlies Janet’s fictional story. It’s remarkable how far gay rights and U.S. culture have come, but Talley notes that you can still be fired or evicted for being gay in 28 states today.
Pulp neatly moves between two similar girls’ very different worlds and offers a pointed reminder that history is never that far behind us.
This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.