In Thrall [Paperback]

Jane DeLynn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1998

So the sixteen-year-old Lynn writes her thirty-seven-year-old English teacher a letter, and they embark on one of the funniest-- and saddest-- love affairs you'll ever read about: one shrouded in secrecy and guilt. For this is the early sixties, years before Gay Liberation, when all Lynn knows about "lezbos" is that they wear their hair in crew cuts, buy suits like her father's, and sprout mustaches over their upper lips. Lynn, in her desire to appear "normal", continues to make homophobic jokes with her girlfriends, neck with her boyfriend, and play the innocent with her parents, even as she checks the mirror each night for the telltale signs of her "perversion".

Here is a story about the kind of seduction that is every parent's nightmare. In this profound, witty, poignant, and highly charged novel, Jane DeLynn proves herself a writer of the first rank.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"All Lynn's phobias, aversions, preferences, and hang-ups make her exaggerated but real and terrifically funny. The great triumph of this novel is that DeLynn has captured the way adolescents felt, talked, and behaved during the early 1960s."-San Francisco Chronicle

"A dazzling novel. . . . The most obvious comparison is Holden Caulfield and The Catcher in the Rye. It's got real wit to it and an audacious originality. The dialogue is superb and the pace perfect. . . . The single most wonderful quality of this novel is its absolute credibility. This book is going to have a long, long life."-Los Angeles Times Book Review

"One of the 100 best gay and lesbian novels of all time"-Publishing Triangle --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Jane DeLynn is the author of the widely acclaimed novels Leash, In Thrall, Real Estate, and Some Do. Her work has appeared in Paris Review, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, New York Times, New York Observer, and Tikkun, and she lived in Saudi Arabia as a correspondent for Mirabella and Rolling Stone during the Gulf War. She shares time between Long Island and St. Louis. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Painted Leaf Press (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891305093
• ISBN-13: 978-1891305092
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,233,530 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Author Jane DeLynn has been compared to an astonishingly diverse group of writers-from Aristophanes and Euripedes and Rabelais to Jane Austen, Edgar Allen Poe, Jonathan Swift, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Helene Cixous, JD Salinger, and Woody Allen. Her first-person trilogy of "In Thrall" (a teenager in love with her teacher in the pre-Stonewall '60s), "Don Juan in the Village" (cruising for love in the US and abroad), and "Leash" (tedium of Capitalist excesses leads the narrator on an adventure which leads her to renounce being "human") is considered the definitive portrait of lesbian life in the last half of the 20th century. Also a journalist-she spent two months in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the first Gulf War-- and librettist-- "The Monkey Opera: The Making of a Soliloquy" was produced at the Brooklyn Academy of Music--she currently resides in Long Island and Los Angeles. Her aim in writing is to "think the Unthinkable and speak the Unspeakable."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Annoyingly tedious, repetitive & talky book, January 9, 2001

By 

labellepersonne (Midwest USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: In Thrall (Paperback)

If you, like me, have forgotten just how annoyingly tedious REAL teenagers talk, reading this book will bring it right back to you.

The main female character, Lynn, a senior in high school, seems to have developed a crush on a 37 year old female teacher, who as it turns out is a lesbian.

However Lynn doesn't seem to really know how she feels about ANYTHING, including her crush on Miss Maxfeld. The only certainity in Lynn's life is the fact she abhors her parents, who apparently have no thoughts or conversations about anything besides their only daughter, Lynn.

Page after endless page we drift along with Lynn as she indulges herself in what passes for thoughts and conversations. Lynn wonders a lot, but learns nothing, and neither does the reader. For a young woman on the brink of entering her college years, Lynn behaves more like a 12 year old.

I would only recommend this novel to someone who suffers from severe insomnia or who enjoys being bored stiff. Two stars was actually being generous on my part.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A neglected masterpiece, May 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: In Thrall (Paperback)

IN THRALL is, quite simply, one of the most perfect, searing, original, and touching novels written by an American in the last fifty years. I've re-read it several times since it came out almost 20 years ago, and it remains as fresh and exciting and pertinent as the day it came out. Not for the politically correct, this novel will appeal to intelligent, literary people. If you enjoy thrilling, daring writing--this book is for you. This is a universal story that will never date.

4.0 out of 5 stars You probably have to have "been there", May 30, 2011

By 

Susan Levy - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Thrall: A Novel (Paperback)

I was about the same age as the main character Lynn at the time of the story, although I was only a junior. Ms. DeLynn gets the self-consciousness (social and intellectual) of "gifted" teens of the period down pat. It makes me very grateful that I did NOT come out in high school!