Synopses & Reviews
By Cecile depicts post-World War II France as it reels from war and recovery. In Paris, an orphan girl, Cecile, finds refuge with an older man. He introduces her to nightclubs, intellectuals, artists (Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Eartha Kitt!), and non-monogamy. When she falls for his mistress, she begins to live a life she deems worthy of writing about . . . but only under the pseudonym of her husband.
Tereska Torres is the author of Women's Barracks, which is widely considered to be the first lesbian pulp novel, and has sold over four million copies. Torres lives in Paris, France.
Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of womens writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-20th century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era. Enjoy the series: Bedelia; The Blackbirder; Bunny Lake Is Missing; By Cecile; The G-String Murders; The Girls in 3-B; In a Lonely Place; Laura; Mother Finds a Body; Now, Voyager; Skyscraper; Stranger on Lesbos; Women's Barracks.
Review
"Madame Torres has re-imagined a youthful Colette (here called Cecile) in the infinitely seductive post-World War II period in Paris, where she moves like a sleeping princess through the perverse fairy tales of man-made cafe society. By Cecile is a sharply perceptive novel."Joan Schenkar, author of The Talented Miss Highsmith
Synopsis
Her husband takes her novels and signs them as his own; she takes his lover and becomes her mistress.
Synopsis
A coming of age novel set in post-war France by an author who "launched the modern genre of the lesbian paperback" (Susan Stryker, author of Queer Pulp).
When eighteen-year-old C cile is orphaned at the end of World War II, the curious and adventurous Catholic student finds refuge in Paris, and with an older man. A former member of the Resistance with C cile's parents, Maurice is handsome, a thrilling cultured patron of the arts, and a mentor eager to introduce the budding young author to his intimate circle of friends--Cocteau, Sartre, and Eartha Kitt As liberating an influence as he is, Maurice also encourages C cile to shed her inhibitions he sees as bourgeois. Possessing a sensual and passionate temperament, C cile is eager to begin exploring--by sharing Maurice's mistress, and writing of every life-changing and delightfully scandalous new experience.
Credited with penning the first, candidly lesbian novel--Women's Barracks, in 1950--Tereska Torr s "scandalized mid-century America" (The New York Times). In By C cile, written in 1963, "Madame Torres has re-imagined a youthful Colette (here called C cile) in the infinitely seductive post-World War II period in Paris, where she moves like a sleeping princess through the perverse fairy tales of man-made cafe society. It's] a sharply perceptive novel" (Joan Schenkar, author of The Talented Miss Highsmith).
About the Author
Tereska Torres is the author of Women's Barracks (Feminist Press), which is widely considered to be the first lesbian pulp novel. It is based on her own experiences as a young woman in the Free French forces during WWII. Condemned in 1952 by the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, the novel became an underground phenomenon, selling over 4 million copies. Torres went on to write many more bestselling novels in France, which were often brought to an American audience by her husband, the author Meyer Levin. Torres lives in Paris, where she is completing her memoirs.