A Short List

Over the years we have all sought out books to read, before we found this wonderful site. Thanks Erin.
So I thought I would list a few of the one’s I have found and read.

The Antique Collector by Glynn Hughes. 1990
As the ‘blurb for the novel goes “ The Antique Collector is a masterfully crafted drama set against the background of Northern England at the turn of the Twentieth century. For 20-years Jack Shuttleworth has been the kept transvestite "mistress" of two wealthy elderly men - these are Jack's "antiques." Jack's anomalous position - at once absurdly comic and tragic - enables him to cast a brilliant light upon his times.

Herculine BArbin by Michel Foucault 1980
A sad story, Herculine Barbin tells the story of her life as a hermaphrodite. Herculine was designated female at birth. A pious girl in a Catholic orphanage, a bewildered adolescent enchanted by the ripening bodies of her classmates, a passionate lover of another schoolmistress, she is suddenly reclassified as a man. Alone and desolate, he commits suicide at the age of thirty in a miserable attic in Paris. Michel Foucault, who discovered these memoirs in the archives of the French Department of Public Hygiene, presents them with the graphic medical descriptions of Herculine's body before and after her death. In a striking contrast, a painfully confused young person and the doctors who examine her try to sort out the nature of masculine and feminine at the dawn of the age of modern sexuality.

Others that you may have found, or missed, include

Sunday Best by Bernice Rubins 1971
On Sunday George dresses up. On Sunday George becomes Emily.

No Mama No by Verity Bargate 1978
The thing that shocked Jodie the most was her second son. Her whole life she’d longed for a daughter. To survive she had to reverse the truth, to see her sons as daughters, and so devise a grotesque escape from the facts.

Sense and Sensuality by Roger Bowdler 1971
A very funny book This tells the rise of Franny Updike, kept by a film star, feted by the media, she went from success to success. There was one little secret, known only to a select few, Franny was a boy and a graduate of borstal.

I hope these few have intrigued you enough to search the second hand bookshops, the library etc. I am certain others have some obscure books they have also read, any suggestions?

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