Tell It Slant
 Beth Follett
 (Reviewer - Kate Holmes)
 2001 Coach House Books
  ISBN: 1552450813


A heroine of a 1937 controversial novel, takes up her own story of life in the Canadian homosexual underworld.

Nora & Robin in Montreal? So right it seems obvious when Beth Follett operates this tour de force in her stunning debut novel. Tell It Slant is sexy, intriguing & wiser than any first novel should be, & is the author's projection into the future of Djuna Barnes' tragic lesbian duo first met in Nightwood.

Beth Follet traces a drunken vortex of passion & longing & betrayal of an unmistakably Canadian couple in this borrowed plot decked out in a writing style & a take on love that does not pretend to be from anywhere but here.

Associate Reviewer Kate Holmes writes:

In the 1937 Introduction to Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, T.S. Eliot described it as “...an accurate rendering of noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication...” More than half a century later, Nora Flood, a central character of that controversial novel, tells her own story in Tell It Slant, moving it into the underworld of homosexuality in Montreal & Vancouver.

This troubled young woman shares her innermost thoughts & feelings as she speaks to the ghosts of her past--her sister Jeanette who died in childhood, & Djuna Barnes, author of Nightwood, & therefore her own creator.

Nora, trying to make sense of her failing relationship with Robin, as well as the failed relationships of her past, looks deep into her own heart, recording her often rambling thoughts. Her loneliness is evident in the way she relives the her childhood pain & abandonment, expressing feelings of betrayal & despair.

Tell It Slant reads like poetry at times, & speaks very directly & implicitly, but also reverently of lesbian sex.

Although I haven't read Djuna Barne's Nightwood, it seems evident that Beth Follett has been painstaking in staying true to it. I thank her for the opportunity to review Tell It Slant.
(04/06/03)

Kate Holmes
2003©Kate Holmes
A RebeccasReads.Com Associate Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio
She is a Canadian wife, mother, grandmother, & avid reader. She has hungered for knowledge her whole life which has led her to haunt her local library & used book stores, looking for “old friends.” She has several bookshelves over which presides a print of Amergin, an ancient wizard from Celtic myth.

A welcome addition to her study, Della, her computer (named for its maker), has become a large part of her world. For some time Kate Holmes reviewed for another ezine, & as a means of giving herself a more varied reading experience, has joined RebeccasReads as a Associate Reviewer.