[AnotherCat]

I finished this a couple of weeks ago and while I found it an easy enough read I have since wondered why as the story line, for me, has no guts to it. Basically is just an insecure teenager (19 if I recall correctly at the start) meets older woman, lesbian relationship develops, they traipse around the country followed by a private detective, and all comes right in the end. But I found the end a bit of a mishmash.

I think I put its easy read down to the prose; simple, easy to get along with. I can't help comparing that with that in trotted out in long science fiction series, for example, of the Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, etc. type. The end chapters though, for me fell apart as it turned into a bit of a jumble; I got the feeling that the author knew how the story was going to end but could not keep the flow up, or they did not know in their plan how it was going to end and did it on the hoof, or they just wanted to wrap it up as quickly as possible and the prose got a bit disorganized. What I see as faults there are not that uncommon for me, I get that feeling when I get to the closing chapters of a number of books.

The lesbian relationship adds something to the story but is pretty low key and based on my growing up years I would have thought that anyone reaching adulthood in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, at least, would find it a bit ho-hum. The adults I knew who would have been of 1940s and 50s vintage would have too so the claim, the veracity of which I don't know, that it was a forerunner of LGBT literature may be its only claim to any sort of fame.

Given the current fashionability of LGBTandeveryotherletterofthealphabetexceptM&F topics I could see it having current appeal but it is pretty tame stuff compared to current literature so wouldn't expect it to have a big resurrection. It does have the bait of the insecure Therese finding a sexual place for herself in life, Carol's divorce adventures as a woman to sympathize with, and husband Harge for the misandrists to vent their anger on, all wrapped in easy prose.

So, for me, a so-so book, a quick and easy read with little complication, and a good filler when distracted by other things (I read it during gaps when I wanted a break from a much longer read).