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A fascinating tale of Paris and literature in early 20th century

If you love books and sexual freedom you’ll adore ‘The Paris Bookseller’

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(Book cover illustration courtesy of Berkley)

The Paris Bookseller
By Kerri Maher
c. 2022, Berkley
$26/336 pages

In LGBTQ bars, men dance with men and women kiss women. In artistic neighborhoods, straight people dine and drink with their queer friends. Queer couples and throuples are among the leaders of the avant-garde. Yet, there’s some repression. Books are banned.

You might think such goings-on can only be found in a present-day gayborhood or cultural hotspot. 

But, this isn’t just a 21-century tableau. It was the scene a century ago in Paris where queer and hetero artists and writers, flirting, dancing, making art, drinking, dining and partying together, created some of the most acclaimed writing of the 20th century.

At the center of it all was Sylvia Beach and her bookshop Shakespeare and Company.

The Paris Bookseller,” a new novel by Kerri Maher, brings us into the creative, diverting world of Paris from 1917 to 1936. Many titans of modernist art and literature thrived there (often before they were famous) – from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas to Ernest Hemingway to Ezra Pound to Andre Gide to Paul Valery to James Joyce. Some were French. Others were American, British, Irish, or Canadian expats.

Sylvia Beach, a bookish American lesbian, who loved Paris, writers, books, and especially, her bookshop, was the friend, librarian, sometimes publisher, hand-holder – den mother – of this community.

Maher has given readers a fab work of historical fiction. Much has been written about Joyce, Stein, Hemingway and their gang. But comparatively little has been written about Beach, who lived from 1887 to 1962.

Beach lived openly for years with her lover and business partner Adrienne Monnier, and published Joyce’s groundbreaking novel “Ulysses,” which had run into censorship.

“The Bookseller” is a fascinating tale of the day-to-day life of Shakespeare and Company, the cultural hub, that nurtured the post-World War I generation of writers and artists.

Told from Beach’s point of view, the novel brings us inside Beach’s solar plexus as she delights in cafes and literary readings; strokes Joyce’s cranky ego and, later, with Monnier, faces the economic hardships of the Depression.

Beach was born in Baltimore. Her father was a Presbyterian minister and her mother supported women’s suffrage. Beach had two sisters – Holly and Cyprian, an actress who was also a lesbian.

In 1901, Beach moved with her family to Paris when her father was appointed assistant minister of the American Church in Paris. She lived in Princeton, N.J., for a time when her father was a minister there.

She then lived in Spain and worked for the Red Cross’ Balkan Commission of the Red Cross. As a volunteer in World War I, she did arduous farm work in Touraine, France.

But Paris had captured Beach’s heart. “Nothing  compared to Paris,” Beach thought on her return to the City of Light, “not knocking on doors with Cyprian and Holly and Mother for the National Woman’s Party in New York; not her first longed-for kiss with her classmate Gemma Bradford; not winning the praise of her favorite teachers.”

If you like novels that make your heart pound with tension every nano-sec, “The Paris Bookseller” may not be the book for you. There are no severed heads. Gertrude Stein takes a few digs at Beach. There’s some snark. Monnier and Beach privately refer to Joyce as the “crooked Jesus” because he can be so annoying. But no knives are taken out.

Yet, “The Paris Bookseller” in its cozy, elegant way has more than its share of drama. It feels relatable to today – when increasing numbers of books are being banned.

Because being gay has been decriminalized in France since the French Revolution, LGBTQ people could live openly in post World War I Paris.

Yet there was a backlash against this freedom.

“Ulysses” was banned because it was thought to be obscene. Against this backdrop, a century ago, on Feb. 2, 1922, Beach published “Ulysses.”

Maher deftly engulfs us in the exaltation, joy, pain, and financial difficulties that Beach endured in dealing with Joyce and publishing his masterpiece.

If you love Paris, cafes, books, difficult geniuses, sexual freedom and censorship battles, you’ll adore “The Paris Bookseller.”

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Books

Examining importance of queer places in history of arts and culture

‘Nothing Ever Just Disappears’ shines with grace and lyrical prose

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(Book cover image courtesy of Pegasus Books)

‘Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Queer Histories’ 
By Diarmuid Hester
c.2024, Pegasus Books
$29.95/358 pages

Go to your spot.

Where that is comes to mind immediately: a palatial home with soaring windows, or a humble cabin in a glen, a ramshackle treehouse, a window seat, a coffeehouse table, or just a bed with a special blanket. It’s the place where your mind unspools and creativity surges, where you relax, process, and think. It’s the spot where, as in the new book “Nothing Ever Just Disappears” by Diarmuid Hester, you belong.

Clinging “to a spit of land on the south-east coast of England” is Prospect Cottage, where artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman lived until he died of AIDS in 1994. It’s a simple four-room place, but it was important to him. Not long ago, Hester visited Prospect Cottage to “examine the importance of queer places in the history of arts and culture.”

So many “queer spaces” are disappearing. Still, we can talk about those that aren’t.

In his classic book, “Maurice,” writer E.M. Forster imagined the lives of two men who loved one another but could never be together, and their romantic meeting near a second-floor window. The novel, when finished, “proved too radical even for Forster himself.” He didn’t “allow” its publication until after he was dead.

“Patriarchal power,” says Hester, largely controlled who was able to occupy certain spots in London at the turn of the last century. Still, “queer suffragettes” there managed to leave their mark: women like Vera Holme, chauffeur to suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst; writer Virginia Woolf; newspaperwoman Edith Craig, and others who “made enormous contributions to the cause.”

Josephine Baker grew up in poverty, learning to dance to keep warm, but she had Paris, the city that “made her into a star.” Artist and “transgender icon” Claude Cahun loved Jersey, the place where she worked to “show just how much gender is masquerade.” Writer James Baldwin felt most at home in a small town in France. B-filmmaker Jack Smith embraced New York – and vice versa. And on a personal journey, Hester mourns his friend, artist Kevin Killian, who lived and died in his beloved San Francisco.

Juxtaposing place and person, “Nothing Ever Just Disappears” features an interesting way of presenting the idea that both are intertwined deeper than it may seem at first glance. The point is made with grace and lyrical prose, in a storyteller’s manner that offers back story and history as author Diarmuid Hester bemoans the loss of “queer spaces.” This is really a lovely, meaningful book – though readers may argue the points made as they pass through the places included here. Landscapes change with history all the time; don’t modern “queer spaces” count?

That’s a fair question to ask, one that could bring these “hidden” histories full-circle: We often preserve important monuments from history. In memorializing the actions of the queer artists who’ve worked for the future, the places that inspired them are worth enshrining, too.

Reading this book may be the most relaxing, soothing thing you’ll do this month. Try “Nothing Ever Just Disappears” because it really hits the spot.

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Books

Upcoming books offer something for every reader

From a history of the gay right to a look at queer women’s spaces

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(Book cover images courtesy of the publishers)

Daylight Savings Time has arrived, giving you more sunlight in the evening and more time to read. So why not look for these great books this spring?

If your taste runs to historical novels, you’re in luck. When Yorick spots his name on the list of the missing after the Titanic sinks, he believes this to be an omen: nobody’s looking for him, so maybe this is his opportunity to move to Paris and open that bookstore he’s been dreaming about. In The Titanic Survivors Book Clubby Timothy Schaffert (Doubleday, $29.00) his decision leads to more than a bucolic little business. Out April 2.

If you’re looking for something a little on the lighter side, discover Riley Weaver Needs a Date to the Gaybutante Ball by Jason June (HarperTeen, $19.99). Young adult books are perfect light reading for adults, and this one is full of high-school drama, romance, comedy, and more drama. What fun! Out May 23.

Can’t get enough of graphic novels? Then look for Escape from St. Hell: A Graphic Novel by Lewis Hancox (Graphix, $14.99). It’s the continuing story of Lew, who just wants to live his life as a guy, which he started doing in the last novel (“Welcome to St. Hell”) but you know what they say about one door closing, one door opening. In this new installment, Lew grapples with the changes he’s made and how his friends and family see things, too. This book is fresh and honest and great for someone who’s just transitioned. Out May 7.

For the mystery lover, you can’t go wrong with Clean Kill: A Nicky Sullivan Mystery by Anne Laughlin (Bold Strokes, $18.95). As the manager of a sober living home in Chicago, Nicky Sullivan has her hands full with 10 other residents of the home. But when one of them is murdered, Sullivan reaches back into her past as an investigator to find the killer by calling on her old partner. Fortunately, he’s still working. Also fortunately, he’s got a new partner and she catches Sullivan’s eye. Can love and murder mix? Out May 14.

Can’t get enough of politics? Then you’ll be happy to find Coming out Republican: A History of the Gay Right by Neil J. Young (University of Chicago Press, $30). In the fractious political atmosphere we have now, it’s essential to understand how gay conservatives have influenced politics through the decades. Find this book before November. It may be one of the most eye-opening books you’ll read. Out April 3.

The reader who loves her “space” will want to take A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women’s Culture by June Thomas (Seal Press, $30) there to read. It’s a book about historically safe places for queer women to be themselves – and some are surprisingly very public. Interviews with iconic feminists and lesbians round out a great look at the locales that queer women have claimed for their own. Out May 28.

And now the housekeeping: Release dates can change and titles can be altered at the last minute, so check with your favorite bookseller or librarian. They’ll also have more recommendations if you need them because there’s a lot of time for reading now.

The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.

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Books

Gay author takes us on his journey to fatherhood in ‘Safe’

One man’s truth about the frustrations and rewards of fostering

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(Book cover image courtesy of Atria Books)

‘Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family’
By Mark Daley
c.2024, Atria Books
$28.99/304 pages

The closet is full of miniature hangers.

The mattress bumpers match the drapes and the rug beneath the tiny bed. There’s a rocker for late-night fusses, a tall giraffe in the corner, and wind-up elephants march in a circle over the crib. Now you just need someone to occupy that space and in the new book, “Safe” by Mark Daley, there’s more than one way to accomplish that dream.

Jason was a natural-born father.

Mark Daley knew that when they were dating, when he watched Jason with his nephew, with infants, and the look on Jason’s face when he had one in his arms. As a gay man, Daley never thought much having a family but he knew Jason did – and so, shortly after their wedding, they began exploring surrogacy and foster-to-adopt programs.

Daley knew how important it was to get the latter right: his mother had a less-than-optimal childhood, and she protected her own children fiercely for it. When Daley came out to her, and to his father, he was instantly supported and that’s what he wanted to give: support and loving comfort to a child in a hard situation.

Or children, as it happened. Just weeks after competing foster parenting classes and after telling the social worker they’d take siblings if there was a need, the prospective dads were offered two small brothers to foster.

It was love at first sight but euphoria was somewhat tempered by courts, laws, and rules. Their social worker warned several times that reunification of the boys with their parents was “Plan A,” but Daley couldn’t imagine it. The parents seemed unreliable; they rarely kept appointments, and they didn’t seem to want to learn better parenting skills. The mother all but ignored the baby, and the child noticed.

So did Daley, but the courts held all the power, and predicting an outcome was impossible.

“All we had was the present,” he said. “If I didn’t stay in it, I was going to lose everything I had.” So was there a Happily-Ever-After?

Ah, you won’t find an answer to that question here. You’ll need to read “Safe” and wear your heart outside your chest for an hour or so, to find out. Bring tissues.

Bring a sense of humor, too, because author and founder of One Iowa Mark Daley takes readers along on his journey to being someone’s daddy, and he does it with the sweetest open-minded open-heartedness. He’s also Mama Bear here, too, which is just what you want to see, although there can sometimes be a lot of tiresome drama and over-fretting in that.

And yet, this isn’t just a sweet, but angst-riddled, tale of family. If you’re looking to foster, here’s one man’s truth about the frustrations, the stratospheric-highs, and the deep lows. Will your foster experiences be similar? Maybe, but reading this book about it is its own reward.

“Safe” soars and it dives. It plays with your emotions and it wallows in anxiety. If you’re a parent, though, you’ll hang on to every word.

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