Herma

By MacDonald Harris

Book Overview

Here is a delight: MacDonald Harris's colourful, fanciful, and moving Herma, the story of a willful young woman who conquers the musical world of the Belle Epoque.

Herma is many things: a glamorous story of a singer who rises from the choir of a country church to stardom at the Paris Opera: the parallel adventures of her agent and friendly enemy Fred Hite, filled with the excitement of the early days of aviation; and a provocative sexual intrigue whose twinned her and heroine, not brother and sister, are forbidden to each other by the secret that lies at the center of their odd and intimate relationship. From its evocative beginnings in the pastoral Southern California of the turn of the century, Herma moves on to larger worlds: first the brash, adolescent San Francisco of the period, then the Earthquake, then the international world of opera in Paris at the most luxurious, opulent, and decadent moment of its history.

Erotic, bejeweled, crowded with incident and a big, vivid cast of characters, Herma is MacDonald Harris's richest and most complex novel.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1915530598
• ISBN13: 9781915530592
• Release Date: December 2024
• Publisher: Galileo Publishers
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

A brilliant exposition of the transgender phenomenon

The late MacDonald Harris has tackled in this, his 'biggest' book, one of the great Jungian mysteries of the animus and anima, the longing for completion by men and women through meeting their 'other half.' Herma is a budding opera singer, Fred Hite her agent. Integrate the two names and you detect the book's inner mystery: hermaphrodite. Herma is transformed into Fred (and back)in the Jungian mirror. Harris explores the worlds of opera (Herma's avocation) and flying (Fred's) at a level of insight and authenticity that is profoundly moving and instructive. He also describes the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 in terms rarely matched in fiction or reportage. The denouement is tragic but powerful. This book is timeless in its appeal and Harris writes meticulously. (Note: I undertook the flying research for this book but except for this 'bias' it has my highest possible recommendation)