Robin Talley - Pulp

In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet Jones keeps the love she shares with her best friend Marie a secret. It’s not easy being gay in Washington, DC, in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a newfound ambition to write and publish her own story, she risks exposing herself—and Marie—to a danger all too real.

Sixty-two years later, Abby Zimet can’t stop thinking about her senior project and its subject—classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Between the pages of her favorite book, the stresses of Abby’s own life are lost to the fictional hopes, desires and tragedies of the characters she’s reading about. She feels especially connected to one author, a woman who wrote under the pseudonym “Marian Love,” and becomes determined to track her down and discover her true identity.

In this novel told in dual narratives, New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley weaves together the lives of two young women connected across generations through the power of words. A stunning story of bravery, love, how far we’ve come and how much farther we have to go.

ROBIN TALLEYis the author of the highly acclaimed Lies We Tell Ourselves , which was a New York Times bestseller, as well as What We Left Behind, As I Descended and Our Own Private Universe. Robin lives in Washington, DC, with her wife and their daughter. You can find her on the web at www.robintalley.comor on Twitter, @robin_talley.

Also by Robin Talley

LIES WE TELL OURSELVES

WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND

AS I DESCENDED

OUR OWN PRIVATE UNIVERSE

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Robin Talley 2018

Robin Talley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © November 2018 ISBN: 9781474069564

To the rich community of queer writers, editors and publishers

who changed the world so many times over and are still changing it today.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Who’s Who and What’s What

Acknowledgments

Extract

About the Publisher

It took all of Abby’s willpower not to kiss her.

She’d gotten pretty good lately at staring at Linh without making it obvious. Most of the time, at least. Some days were harder than others, though, and today might be the hardest yet.

They’d just gotten back from a Starbucks run, and Abby kept darting looks at Linh out of the corner of her eye. They were sitting only inches apart on the lumpy old couch in the senior lounge, and as Linh sipped her drink and scribbled in her notebook, Abby couldn’t shake the memory of precisely how the echo of iced coffee tasted on Linh’s lips.

She knew she should stop thinking about this. Or at the very least, she should pretend to stop. She and Linh were officially “just friends” now, for reasons Abby was still trying to forget, and she was supposed to be doing her very best to act like that arrangement was perfectly fine with her.

So as she sat next to Linh, her feet tucked under her, Abby really did try to focus on the laptop screen balanced on her knees. Even though it was basically impossible to tear her eyes away from the spot where Linh’s soft brown hair curled into the nape of her perfectly sloped neck.

The senior lounge was nothing special—just a tiny room in a far-off corner of the fourth floor, with a few couches and a dusty TV that had probably last worked in the nineties—and everyone at school except Abby and Linh seemed to have forgotten it existed. Which made it the perfect place for Abby to secretly pine after her ex-girlfriend, since no one else was around to notice and make fun of her for it.

“I can’t believe Mr. Knight already wants my first lab done by Monday.” Linh wrinkled her nose down at her notes. Abby didn’t know if it was good or bad that Linh was so oblivious to her silent yearning. “Don’t the teachers know fall of senior year is supposed to be about college applications? We shouldn’t have to start our projects until next semester.”

Abby didn’t want to talk about college applications or senior projects, but she did like it when Linh made that cute wrinkly-nose face. “Yeah, you’re totally right.”

“Do you have something due next week, too? What did you pick for your topic anyway?”

Abby scooted over to peer down at what Linh was writing. It was a blatant and probably pathetic attempt to get close to her, but Linh didn’t seem to mind. She glanced up at Abby with a smile and went back to jotting notes about molecular techniques.

When they were this close, it was so easy to remember how it used to feel. Kissing her. Being encircled in a pair of arms that had no intention of letting her go.

Kissing was Abby’s favorite activity in the entire world. It was pure sensation. When you were kissing someone, all you had to do was follow your instincts. There was no point stopping to worry about what came next.

That was the best part of being in love. The way it set the rest of the world on mute.

“So for real, what are you going to write? Poetry?” Linh finally met her eyes, and Abby blushed. Ugh, as if she wasn’t transparent enough already.

Not that Linh seemed to mind that, either.

“Nah, I’ve decided my poetry sucks.” Abby tried to arrange her face into a casual smile. They were halfway through their free period, and she was determined to get through the rest without giving herself away. “In eighth grade I had to write a love poem for French, and the best I could do was Je t’aime, ma puce, je t’aime tellement. ”

Linh took Chinese, not French, so she asked, “What does puce mean?”

“Flea.” They both laughed.

It would be so easy to close the space between them. Last year, that was exactly what Abby would’ve done. Linh would’ve leaned in, too, and they would’ve kissed, and everything would’ve been perfect. No need for pining or pretending.