Title: Whisper Their Love Author: Valerie Taylor Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press Publish Date: 2006 (orig. 1957) Pages: 260 Genres:: Literature, Lesbian Reviewer: Chris R. Morgan

Rating:

There's something special about those sleazy pulp novels from the 50s and 60s. Perhaps, it's the lurid overly suggestive cover art or the underly suggestive prose, the wacky pen names (okay Orrie Hitt, if that is your real name) or maybe the fact that these authors wrote their work in the shortest possible time it took to write a manuscript that hardly ever exceeded 150 pages. For me, there was a wealth of possibility in the strict formula required to make a sellable sexy product. While most stuck to the basics for want of money, some used the medium to add a little extra substance and commentary to their semi-sensual lingo.

Enter Velma Young, a divorcee with three sons and a knack for literary-leaning social activism. Under the unassuming, less housewife-sounding Valerie Taylor, she penned numerous lesbian-themed pulp novels with such awesome titles as Girls in 3-B, Stranger on Lesbos and, of course, Return to Lesbos. Barbara Grier's introduction gives us a thorough view of what it was like for women to write of girl-on-girl action. Publishers could really have cared less about who was ravaging who, so much as it was able to make a profit and kept them away from John Law. This meant that for a lesbian novel to see print, the innocent protagonist's same-sex desires had to be null by the end of the book via a kind, handsome Prince Charming (who is probably not Ted Haggard) who magically cures her of her ill-advised pleasure seeking. It's writers like Taylor who took this formula and ran with it in their own way and got away with it; anyone who was smart enough to notice got the full experience.

Whisper Their Love is the outwardly generic tale of Joyce, a college student from the Midwest who whisks herself away to, of all places, the south to the horribly named Louisa Henderson Hicks Junior College which, despite its seeming lack of prestige, is likely to be modeled out of any if not all of the stuffy sister schools. Thus begins the journey of Joyce's strange sexual awakening. In Taylor's girl world, men are lambasted for their selfish, pig-headed ways that get girls "in trouble" and leave them to get out of said "trouble." It seems that Joyce can't meet a potential male mate without getting sexually molested in some way be it by a frat boy or her mom's fiance. She is saved from this torment of victimhood by Edith, a more nuanced lesbian who engages in a sensual, but not explicit relationship with Joyce. Love passages are written with the utmost delicacy and directness. The whole thing is kept hush-hush and Edith even goes to the length of dating dudes in order to cover up her secret life against people who don't understand. Joyce resists such sellout behavior; that is, until John somehow comes into the picture and she's made straight again.

Taylor's work deserves reprint for significant reasons. Taylor was hardly mercenary in her writing of this book and thus, actually cared as to what the story meant and where it was to go. She makes enough effort in her character development to make ladies like Joyce, Edith and the gruff Mary Jean more than just pairs of co-ed tits. More significantly, she leaves the wooden characterization to what some moralists might see as the only key plot point. John, as he is called, might as well be a cardboard cutout. Clearly, Taylor is having a bit of fun while fulfilling an obligation to her generous publisher. Funnier still, Arsenal has included the "medical" disclaimer from a supposed doctor (whom Taylor claimed was actually an office assistant) that parents, of all people, should read this and be wary of the ways of the dastardly lesbians.

Aside from the novel itself, Arsenal has gone through the trouble of providing additional writings by Taylor, mostly her poems which, honestly, could as well have been written by any of her characters. Included also are articles and interviews that provided an unprecedented amount of information about Taylor who, indeed, was not some anonymous, coffee-swilling pervert hammering out text from a trailer in the woods. In fact, she could have been your local librarian or even your eccentric aunt. Had Taylor been writing today, she'd probably be included in the liberal pantheon of high culture as a serious writer. But then again, where's the challenge in that? Taylor took the approach of writing elevator music while hating elevator music. Only through that could something more than just neat and time passing come about—as it surely was accepted in the late 50s, clearly she did what she set out to do.