Originally published in New Zealand in 1991, Parker & Hulme relates the story of the 1950s New Zealand murder case recently translated to cinema as Heavenly Creatures. Laurie and Glamuzina examine the scandal and spectacle in contextual terms, considering events and circumstances of the participants both before and after the murder. Matter-of-factly describing the murder, they make an effort to "desensationalize" the crime. In spite of their efforts, however, the crime remains sensational; it is simply that kind of crime.
Two teenage girls, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, best friends, live a vivid fantasy life. When Pauline's mother decides the relationship is unhealthy, the girls take her for a walk in the park and brain her with a brick. Their cold-blooded planning, together with Pauline's gleeful journal account, are chilling, indeed. Yet the authors' descriptions of the prudish nature of New Zealand society, the fact that both girls' families were outside of accepted norms, and the tension between outside norms and the secrets they lived with, make the crime less puzzling. Neither girl's family was "normal," in the society of the 1950s. In one there was a love triangle and an impending divorce; in the other, the parents were not married.
The authors' state, "we do not suggest that the western patriarchal nuclear family model would ever be stress-free since it functions as a mechanism to control women and children in order to benefit men and perpetuate male supremacy. The suggestion that some families are 'dysfunctional' implies the existence of a 'functional' family, a concept we reject."
The book is a fascinating and thorough account of the crime, the trial, and the public response to an unusual crime, with meticulous attention to contemporary social values and their effects. --MT
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Kate Allen has a new detective, Marta Goicochea, a Basque-American, and perhaps you can guess from the title what she does: she's a phone psychic. This is a new sort of occupation for a female detective, and her work does have the potential to introduce her to any number of strange and troubled people. Marta lives in a tight-knit lesbian community, deeply depressed over the end of a love affair. When she begins to go to a support group, she meets someone new and, when she begins to feel an interest, the new love is accused of murder. Allen knows something about depression; Marta's behavior and feelings are familiar to anyone who has lived with its debilitating effects. The settings seem real, and the vulnerability of women to bigotry, especially from cowards who threaten to get at us through our cats, insightfully drawn. --MT
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If you did all the things you dreamed of in your angriest dreams, the result might look something like Hothead Paisan roaming the streets in this collection of comic stories. Angry, aggressive, with a charming, wacky smile and a maniacal glint in her eye, Hothead does for us what we are too normal to do. She doesn't contain her anger; she lives it, and we root for her all the way. A man gets in her space, she removes the offending part with a chainsaw. Men rape, she . . . well, I don't need to go into any detail. There's no shortage of appropriate weapons, and Hothead wields them with panache. And don't forget her cat, Chicken, who dances, talks, eats, and watches Hothead, nobly representing all our cats. Diane DiMassa has created the perfect underground comic for lesbians and feminists; she's the woman's answer to R. Crumb. --MT
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