cover image Not Telling Mother: Stories from a Life

Not Telling Mother: Stories from a Life

Diane Salvatore. Naiad Press, $9.95 (160pp) ISBN 978-1-56280-044-4

These mostly interconnected stories get off to a bad start with Salvatore's clumsy imagery (``prone-on-the-potholed sand days''). But the collection soon turns into a spirited kaleidoscope of lesbian life. Three couples gather for a vacation in Provincetown, but infidelity lurks within the sextet, and the resolution threads its ways through several stories. Renee, the central character, needs some resolutions, too, of her past and present. She ponders her early role as the ``first in a series of outrageous stunts and bizarre activities'' of a former love, Roseanne, who gets married. Wistfully, she recalls her girlhood crush on Penny and later realizes that her own mother was loved by a cousin who entered a convent to smother that silent passion. Along the way we meet other characters, like Mike, the vindictive husband of Chrissie who runs off with Eileen, and Tess, whose idea of a turn-on is to whisk a waitress to the back of a restaurant for a ``test drive'' before a date. Salvatore ( Love, Zena Beth ) adds new twists to the themes of coming out and homophobia, and shows unrequited love, jealousy, betrayal and exploitation as the unhappy flip side of all forms of love, gay and straight. (Nov.)