I just finished the recently released autobiography, Except for One Little Problem: A Memoir of a Life in Hiding, by psychotherapist, and first time author, Joan Denson. It is the memoir of her 40 year coming out process, one that provides an interesting chronological narrative of our (read that: lesbian) common history, from the 50s through the present.

I cannot imagine what the publisher, Barricade Books, could have been thinking, with the third-rate hacking and editorial blunders (while I'm not much of a grammar-phobe, the misplaced quotation marks made it damn hard at times to follow, and the misspellings would have been laughable, if only they hadn't made me groan first), I found I didn't blame the author. While you can tell the book is a first writing effort, my sympathy for the subject matter overrode any problems I had with editing or style. I really thought Denson brave in her exploration of what it was like to discover an attraction to women (and for her, it wasn't a very pleasant find), college romance, marriage, children, experiences with parents and friends, and the lengthy search for and discovery of her own self-acceptance. And all this taking place amidst the chaos and insanity of the whole socio-political era.

Denson is literally forced to see her love of women at age 19 (in the same year I was born), after becoming obsessed with the long-dead Anne Frank. It is on a trip to Germany to meet Anne's father that an unhappy encounter with an American boy pressures her to see the love underneath her fixation. I really appreciate that she doesn't hide her own revulsion at such a discovery, and how, from that aversion, a very deep closet with all sorts of complicated little nooks and crannies was formed.

For all those women working through their own trials inherent in self-acceptance, family, relationship and marriage complexities, I think Except for One Little Problem will hold up a mirror and allow them to see that they are not living such an isolated existence.

As always,
Your devoted sister,

Linda Talley
aka MizzT