roles-sometimes vital to the plot but generally just as background pieces. Her heroines are all heterosexually oriented but they are always the physically androgynous types of childhood dreams-lean and fleet (Nancy Drew in modern dress and a little older).

Michael Blankfort, a reliable but not prolific novelist, includes a pair of homosexual portraits in his novel, Goodbyė I Guess (Simon and Schuster, 1962, Signet, 1963). It is primarily the story of a grandfather taking his grandson to Europe during the summer before the boy's first year in college (what used to be called "The Grand Tour"). On board the ship the grandfather falls in love with a woman whose past life includes a homosexual husband. This is told in great detail with considerable sympathy. Also on the ship, Tewfik Bey (perfumed and Arabian, too) throws a pass at the grandson. Perversely, the author applauds the miserably unhappy husband who has attempted heterosexuality but hates the homosexual who simply lives as he is.

Yet another treatment of the Burgess and MacLean case has appeared. This one emphasizes the homosexual aspects of the case out of all proportion to the facts. It is called Burgess and MacLean and is co-authored by Anthony Purdy and Douglas Sutherland (Doubleday, 1963).

An excellent, very long short story by James Norman Hall, "The Forgotten One," is available now in an inexpensive reprint, The Forgotten One and Other True Tales of the South Pacific (Little Brown Paperbacks, 1963, $1.95). It is the story of a man who isolates himself on an island because he is homosexual.

Another reprint of interest in general is the Richard Burton translation of The Kama Sutra of Vatsayana (Putnam Capricorn Books, 1963, $1.95). The hardcover edition last year was not the Burton translation. Stylistically the Burton is superior, and it is equally unexpurgated.

Several years ago, Crowell brought out a collection of three short novels by a young English woman, Rosemary Timperly, called Child in the Dark (1956). One of these novels was an excellent and unusual study of homosexual influences on children and the tendencies present in many children. Since then Miss Timperley has published steadily in England but she has not been published in this country. Her latest book, The Bitter Friendship (London, Robert Hale, 1963) concerns the lifelong attachment of two women from age 8 until the death of one of them at about 45. It is never overt but it is not in any sense a heterosexual friendship. Miss Timperly is a teacher and her knowledge of the emotions of children is brought out in this book as it was in the earlier title. It is in this narrow sphere that she is most convincing. The most moving part of the book treats of the love of

mattachine REVIEW

one of the heroines for a mannish (but heterosexual) teacher when the dual heroines are about 13 years old.

Humorously, English novels which reach America often come in reverse order. That is, an author becomes well-known and his latest and so-called greatest novel reaches this country first. Then publishers scrounge up all his old ones if he is a sales success and bring them out. With Anthony Powell, famous for his "Music of Time" series, this has now happened with the first American edition of his 1939 novel, What's Become of Warof his ing? (Little Brown, 1963).

It is a very minor homosexual treatment but it is a good dry English novel with an intriguing thread os suspense. Very pleasant reading.

Mary McCarthy's big new novel, The Group (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963) is the story of eight Vassar graduates of 1933 and their lives after graduation for seven years, until 1941. Out of the group only two have happy lives and one of these is Elinor Eastlake (Lakey) who has a successful homosexual marriage with a cosmopolitan European woman. It is a good book, though not nearly so big or important as many of the reviews would lead one to believe. The homosexual is an exceedingly desirable personality and this, or course, enhances it for readers of this column.

John Bowen's latest book, The Birdcage (Harper & Row, 1962, 1963), is a gentle English satire about the love affair of Peter Ash and Norah Palmer. These two have lived together for nine years, sans wedlock. They are reasonably adjusted to one another. Previous to this liaison, Peter has been wholly homosexual. As the novel opens, the affair falls apart and Peter returns to his past ways. However, Peter is incapable of caring for himself and a less-successful homosexual would be hard to imagine. The Venetian gondolier rolls him, the Soho spiv knocks him out, takes his money and all his clothes except his BVD's and a shirt, an unnamed partner gives him scabies which requires a treatment calculated to end all sexual desire forever, and on and on. It is a relief when Norah again takes over the care of Peter, simply out of private doubts (the reader's) that he will be able to survive in this world by himself. Bowen has the ability to laugh at people with love in his voice and the novel is not at all unsympathetic. There has been a flurry of talk about homosexuality as a means of controlling over-population. At best, this is a rather silly idea. However, it has great fictional possibilities. Anthony Burgess, English Satirist, has used this idea in his novel, The Wanting Seed (Norton, 1963). In an England not so far in the future it is considered "sapiens to be homo" and homosexuals have virtual control of business and the government. Infanticide is encouraged also to decrease the population; and one child (living

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