Book review: The Love of Good Women
By Isabel Miller Alma Routsong , an American novelist who came out as a lesbian writer under the pen name Isabel Miller, is the author of the classic Patience and Sarah . The Love of Good Women , which I chose to read as part of the LGBT reading challenge 2011 , is also one the novels that she signed as Isabel Miller – apparently a combination of an anagram for "lesbia" and her mother's birth name. First published in 1986, The Love of Good Women is set in America towards the end of World War II and is centred on two main female characters, Gertrude and Millie. Married respectively to brothers Earl and Barney, they are both unhappy - even though for different reasons. Having married across class lines, Gertrude is an extremely insecure woman. She looks up at her husband, who, in her eyes, could do nothing wrong. Ever. If he’s mean to her or is impatient, she thinks it’s her fault for being a woman and as such, in his words, a “stupid and inferior creature”. She believes t...