In Thrall: A Novel

By Jane DeLynn

Book Overview

"Dear Miss Maxfield...what I'm really afraid of is that I am a homosexual human being. I wish you were one too but I don't think it's possible there could be so many in one school, do you? -probably there is only one person who is homosexual in one place at one time and that one person (I am afraid) is me...."

Sixteen-year-old Lynn writers her thirty-seven-year-old English teacher a letter, and they embark on one of the funniest-and saddest-love affairs in fiction: one shrouded in secrecy and guilt. This is the early sixties, years before gay liberation, when all Lynn knows about "lezbos" is that they wear their hair in crew cuts, buy suits like her father's, and sprout mustaches over their upper lips. Lynn, in her desire to appear "normal," continues to make homophobic jokes with her girlfriends, neck with her boyfriend, and play the innocent with her parents, even as she checks the mirror each night for the telltale signs of her "perversion."

In this profound, witty, poignant, and highly charged novel, Jane DeLynn proves herself a writer of the first rank.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0299190145
• ISBN13: 9780299190149
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.6" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A neglected masterpiece

IN THRALL is, quite simply, one of the most perfect, searing, original, and touching novels written by an American in the last fifty years. I've re-read it several times since it came out almost 20 years ago, and it remains as fresh and exciting and pertinent as the day it came out. Not for the politically correct, this novel will appeal to intelligent, literary people. If you enjoy thrilling, daring writing--this book is for you. This is a universal story that will never date.