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Lesbians in the Mainstream
Five Minutes in Heaven is not a literary work; it is a well-written, entertaining narrative that succeeds as popular fiction. It is likely to appeal to general readers and to academics looking for a lightly satiric treatment of postmodernism. However, it may be less appealing to readers looking for a positive image of lesbian experience.
Five Minutes in Heaven is a novel about "graveyard love," a love that lasts until both of the participants are dead. The protagonist, Jude, feels such a love for her childhood friend, Molly. The first third of the book traces the development of their intense relationship, the unconscious effect their relationship has on Jude's emerging sense of her sexuality, and the cultural forces in Tennessee during the 1950s that militate against her becoming conscious of her sexual identity. The rest of the book, set primarily in New York and Paris, depicts the relationships that she has as she matures and experiences various perceptions of her sexuality. Eventually Jude comes to realize that she is a lesbian. But even more important in terms of the major thrust of the book is Jude's realization that graveyard love is "the love itself, not the specters who inspired it. And it belonged to her. It was her" (371). For Jude, graveyard love is obsessive and related to death. Not until the second-to-last chapter does she experience a symbolic death and rebirth that enable her to see the connections among love, sexuality, and the spontaneity of life.
Popular novels are, above all, good entertainment. Successful fiction of this type avoids stereotypes, introducing interesting individuals whom we want to get to know. Usually, popular novels have well-constructed, suspenseful plots that sustain middle-class values without examining the nature of those values. As good entertainment, they provide us with an escape by telling a compelling story that removes us from the mundane world of inconclusive events and uncertain significance. Finally, popular fiction at its best offers vivid descriptions that increase the particularity of the world being constructed, reinforcing the illusion of reality.
Lisa Alther offers us an array of quirky characters, some with comic and some with tragic overtones. There is a comic portrait of Jude's elegant grandmother, who travels the world comparing every...