Category Archives: 2012 Reviews

December 6, 2012 · 5:49 PM

Thoughts: Carry the One by Carol Anshaw (Green Carnation Prize Project)

Carry the One by Carol AnshawCarry the One
by Carry Anshaw
Published 2012 by Simon & Schuster
Read December 2012
253 pages

When Jodie contacted me about her idea to have a group of bloggers read the Green Carnation Prize* short-list, I didn’t hesitate before choosing Carol Anshaw’s Carry the One. Mostly because I had attempted to read the novel before, but I ended up setting it aside when I realized it just wasn’t the right time to read the book. The Green Carnation Prize project was a good excuse to give it another chance.

Warning: This post contains discussion of actual events in the novel. Some might call them spoilers. 

The Plot: After Carmen and Matt’s wedding, Olivia, Nick, Maude, Alice, and Jim drive off a little drunk and a little stoned. The car hits and kills a child, and Olivia, who was driving, is sent to jail. The book follows the characters’ lives over the next few decades of their lives.

Some thoughts:

  • Carry the One starts off with an epigram, a quote from a Gillian Welch song, as if to say, “Hello, this book is going to be very gay.”
  • I was struck by how the violence that occurs in the novel was connected to conservative arguments. The little girl is killed because Olivia is high on drugs. Message: drugs are bad. Nick’s nose is broken because “Everyone was tacitly deferring to some universal law that, while his daughter lay in the hospital morgue, a father was allowed to punch out the guy lounging around in the wedding dress” (p 18). Message: variant gender expression is bad. Carmen’s ear is destroyed while volunteering to help women safely access a clinic that performs abortions. Message: abortion is bad. Maybe this wasn’t the author’s intent, but it happened enough that I started to pay attention.
  • Also, by including the tragic car accident right after Alice and Maude have sex, Anshaw continues an unfortunate tradition of tragic car accidents “coincidentally” occurring after same-sex partners have sex. (Including the first YA book with LGBT content, I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip by John Donovan, wherein the main character’s dog is hit by a car after the MC has sex with his male friend.)
  • I’m interested in how Alice is the only character whose intimate moments are detailed for the reader. She is presented as a sexual object in a way that none of the other characters are.
  • I loved the relationship Carmen had with her sister Alice. This quote is probably my favorite in the entire book and definitely makes a top ten list somewhere: Carmen was always a little startled (and titillated) when Alice said things like this. She wasn’t sure if this was her sister’s way of being shocking, or if lesbians all talked this way among themselves. It always tripped her up. She used to imagine love between women as a languid extension of friendship. Something Virginia Woolf-ish involving tea and conversation and sofas and afternoon eliding into evening, a small lamp needing to be turned on, but left unlit. And so she was brought up short by Alice’s exhausting–even just to witness–passion for Maude, her desolation since Maude walked out of her life. (p. 63)
  • Carmen works in a women’s shelter and I was pleasantly surprised that one of the women had been abused by her female partner. Representations of survivors of same-sex violence are so rare, and the inclusion here didn’t seem forced, as if included just to make a point.
  • This is the second novel, after John Green’s fantastic The Fault in Our Stars, I’ve read this year where a character visits the Anne Frank House.
  • Time goes by quickly, with each chapter beginning without a note as to just how much time has passed. Usually this bothers me in books, but I found it easy enough to keep track based on the pop culture references and, more directly, characters’ mentions of time.
  • Alice gets mono–which the text frequently refers to as the KISSING DISEASE. Cause y’all know who she’d be kissing, amiright? It’s telling that in the same chapter, Alice tells Carmen she’s “reading all these cheesy dyke novels from the forties and fifties,” which she loves because “[t]hey’re like Greek tragedies. Everyone gets horribly punished in the end. Or they hang themselves with a belt over the steam pipe” (p. 152). Since Alice, Carmen, and Nick are named after tragic Opera characters…I got kind of nervous about where this was going.
  • And then, oh God, their mother dies right after Alice has sex. Alice, you should never have sex apparently because you KILL PEOPLE WITH YOUR LADY LOVE.

Grade: B-

Recommended: Despite some of the things I’ve said above, Carry the One is an engaging, well-written story that just so happens to use several tropes of LGBT fiction.

Green Carnation Prize Project participants:

*The Green Carnation Prize recognizes the best book of the year by a LGBT-identified author. 

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November 5, 2012 · 9:25 AM

Mini-Review: The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman

The Freedom Maze
by Delia Sherman
Published 2011 by Small Beer Press
Ebook borrowed from the library
Read August 2012
258 pages

My favorite book in fifth grade was Jane Yolen’s The Devil Arithmetic, the story of a young Jewish girl who is transported back in time to a concentration camp. I read The Devil’s Arithmetic the way some people read Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre: over and over and over, often sneaking pages under my desk during science lessons, basically eating the book until it was falling apart and the pages no long stayed attached to the binding. So when I heard about The Freedom Maze, a book about a young, Southern white girl in 1960 who goes back in time to live as a slave in 1860, I was unable to resist the muffled cries of my 10 year-old self, pleading with me to give it a chance.

I don’t read a lot of young adult fiction anymore, but what I can say is this: The Freedom Maze would have ended up the way of The Devil’s Arithmetic in my younger self’s hands. (I was pleasantly not-quite-surprised to read Solomon’s thanks to Jane Yolen in the acknowledgements.) In fact, as someone who tends to avoid young adult fiction, I found myself thoroughly charmed and surprised by the risks Sherman took in this novel.

Grade: A

Recommended: When you’re looking for a unique, well-written YA story.

This post includes links that are part of Amazon’s Affiliate program. If you click a link and buy the book, I get a (very) small portion of the profits.

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October 11, 2012 · 8:41 AM

Thoughts: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
Published 1991 by Vintage
399 pages
Read June 2012

From  IndieBound:

In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

Why I read this book: I was browsing the shelves at the library for something new and I recognized the title and decided to give it a try.

Initial thoughts: ”Okay, I get it. It’s the 1980s and Greed Is Good and Bateman is rich and greedy and obsessed with products and brands. Gotcha. If he describes one more person’s outfit down to their tie and socks, I’m going to fall asleep.”

…then, on page 132: “Oh, oh, oh.” After pages and pages of dry descriptions of making restaurant reservations and

During the last ⅔ of the book: Just me, rocking back and forth, trying not to puke.

Upon finishing: I need to find one of those old fashioned metal chastity belts and protect my lady parts next time I leave the house. Just sayin’.

Best article I’ve read about American Psycho: LANDMARKS OF LADY-HATE Presents! American Psycho, or, Despite All My Rage I Am Still Just A Rat In A Vagina over at the feminist blog Tiger Beatdown, which was the beginning of my healing process after reading this book. It’s a fantastic analysis and I wish I had written it.

Grade: No
You should read this if…: I started writing this post right after I finished American Psycho back in June, so it was before the Dueling Monsters battle when all these bloggers I am quite fond of started reading it and I was all


Regarding Ellis’ desire to adapt 50 Shades of Grey for the big screen: I haven’t read 50 Shades, I have no real desire to, but I was so revealed to hear that Ellis was denied the opportunity to work on the film. It would be the most horrifying movie of all time and my entire country would be rocking back and forth forever.

Edited to Add (ETA): I realized I tagged this post as “GLBTQ” without explaining why and nothing annoys me greater, so, in brief: Bateman has multiple encounters with women he cajoles into having sex with each other. There is also a man who has a crush on Bateman which is one of the triggers to Bateman’s growing psychosis.

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October 10, 2012 · 8:18 PM

TLC Book Tour: Love, In Theory by E. J. Levy

loveintheoryLove, in Theoryloveintheory
by E.J. Levy
Published September 2012 by University of Georgia Press
Copy received for review via publisher
Read October 2012
224 pages

When I finished reading Love, In Theory, I closed the book and thought, “Oh good God love is awful and everyone cheats and I want to hide under my bed forever.”

What I liked

  • Levy is a clever, witty writer, who frequently makes enjoyable puns.
  • I really like this quote, from the story “Gravity”

Whenever Richard meets his high school friends, people he pretended to know because friends were necessary as clothes–they make it less embarrassing to go out in public–he feels a twinge of self-consciousness, an embarrassed moment when he finds himself wondering what they know about his life now. It’s not that he’s ashamed about the fact that he is gay, quite to the contrary, he imagines rather fatuously that this preference marks him out, makes him part of a lineage of Baldwin and Wilde, Shakespeare and Socrates, confirms some long-held but vaguely and never quite articulated sense that he is different from the others, born for some remarkable end, which he is only now beginning to suspect he is not. (p. 159)

  • All of the stories provide thought-provoking, if not always pleasant, ideas about love and loss and the idea that what we think we want isn’t always what we need.

What didn’t work for me

  • I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, and it’s not like I have never been hurt or fallen out of love.
  • Of the three stories that feature gay men (or, in “My Life In Theory,” a straight-identified man who has an affair with another man), one has AIDS, one realizes that he is only attracted to another man because he reminds him of himself, and one can’t stop cheating on his partner. Basically a bunch of stereotypes.
  • Maybe I’m just not smart enough to understand stories (mostly) about middle- to upper-middle-class professors.

Grade: B-
Recommended: Best if you enjoy the heartbreache-y elements of literary fiction. I think this collection would also be really good for book clubs.

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October 8, 2012 · 10:21 AM

Movie Review: Perks of Being a Wallflower

When I wrote about The Perks of Being a Wallflower for last year’s Banned Books Week, I mentioned that I was “a little worried about the movie, but if it’s anywhere near as awesome as it should be based on the book, it’ll be very good.”

I had high hopes but realistic expectations for the film. The screenplay was written and directed by the original author, Stephen Chbosky, so I figured that at the very least he’d be respectful of the original work, since, of course, he wrote it and all.

I went out to see the film this weekend and I was surprised by how much I absolutely loved it. Oh, it is so perfect. I spent ummm approximately 70% of the film with tears streaming down my face. This may not sound like an endorsement, but everything in this movie was exactly what I wanted it to be, so bring on the tears!

Other thoughts:

Logan Lerman (Charlie): At times, Lerman reminded me of Christian Slater–or his voice, at least. I was worried that Lerman was coming off as “too cool” to fully capture Charlie’s awkwardness but he ended up proving me wrong.
 
Emma Watson (Sam): She is so charming and delightful as Sam.
 
Ezra Miller (Patrick): He was my absolute favorite–a perfect Patrick. I had to look up his real name on IMDB and saw that he also played Kevin in We Need to Talk About Kevin and ummm I can’t really believe it because he’s so creepy in that! And so loveable in this! Acting, etc.
 
Paul Rudd (Mr. Anderson): I have never been particularly fond of Paul Rudd, so now that he’s played my favorite fictional English teacher I have a few new warm fuzzies to get used to.
 
Melanie Lynskey (Aunt Helen): Having the lady who played Charlie’s stalker neighbor in Two and a Half Men play Aunt Helen made that Two and a Half Men character so much creepier than necessary. Ugh.
 
Music: They do a dance to “Come On Eileen” and I might just have to learn it and perform it at private functions.
I worry that this movie may not have the same effect on people who didn’t fall in love with the book in high school. Even if it doesn’t, it did manage to absolutely satisfy me and my long standing love for the book.

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October 6, 2012 · 12:15 PM

Thoughts: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson


winterson Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
by Jeanette Winterson
Published 2012 by Grove Press
Review e-book sent by publisher via Netgalley
Read September 2012
224 pages

Along the way to reading this book, I joined a book club.

I had been trying (well, “trying,” I kept getting distracted by other things) to read Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal for a few weeks without luck, never getting past page two. Then I told myself I had to read Winterson’s classic semi-autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit before I could read her actual memoir. Some time went by, I bought the Oranges e-book, read it, and didn’t particularly care for it, so I went back to ignoring the memoir. A few months later I received an email from a local organization that happens to also run a queer book club and lo and behold, their title for September was Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? 

I’d never been to a book club meeting before, although I’ve always been really interested. The best thing about this particular book club is that they specifically focus on LGBTQ titles, which, as you may have noticed, is a specialty of mine.

I’m so incredibly thankful that my new book club chose Winterson’s memoir because despite my reservations about Oranges and how long it took me to delve into Why Be Happy, it ended up being one of my favorite reads of the year.

It’s a book that I could just quote over and over again:

Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home–they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.

There is warmth there too–a hearth. I sit down with a book and I am warm. (614/2245, Kindle edition)

Or

Black is all the colours and Shakespeare is all the alphabet (1137/2245, Kindle edition)

Or

Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open–the only way to stop the story running away under its own momentum, often towards an ending no one wants. (1171/2245, Kindle edition)

For anyone who was affected by Oranges, it’s fascinating to read about what “really happened” and how it was actually much worse. For anyone who loves books, it’s heart-warming to be reminded how important books can be to someone who is otherwise all alone. For anyone who has ever looked for love and worried they weren’t strong enough for it, or for anyone who continues that endless search for home, there is so much in this memoir to love and think over.

Grade: A
Recommended: To anyone who has ever found an escape in literature.

 

This book and post count toward the Literary Others event hosted by Adam at Roof Beam Reader in honor of LGBT History Month.

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September 28, 2012 · 12:43 PM

Firmoo Glasses

I never do product reviews, but when Firmoo approached me to review a pair of their glasses, I couldn’t refuse. I’ve been wearing glasses since the fourth grade and I have only owned maybe five frames since then. In fact, when I was in college, I went almost two years wearing chipped frames that folks kindly assumed was part of their design. Glasses are so expensive and such an immediate fashion statement that buying frames puts me into an anxious state because who even knows the next time I’ll be able to buy them.

What I was sent–before the big reveal

That’s where Firmoo comes in. The pair they sent me, including lenses, frames, and coating, costs about 40 dollars plus shipping. I spent over 200 dollars on the frames I bought earlier this year from Lens Crafters and that was WITH my insurance, which covers lenses and part of the cost of frames. The buying process on firmoo is quick and painless, and they have a pretty good selection. I was pretty psyched about the frames I chose because I’ve been searching for a blue pair for a long time.

The only difficulty I had with the ordering process was that my

My new glasses! Thanks Firmoo!

prescription didn’t include a Pupil Distance (PD) measurement. I found a nifty online test that helped me figure it out, though, and I’ve had no problems with the lenses.

If you’re looking for a reasonably priced way to get fashionable glasses, I highly recommend Firmoo. I’m going to buy myself a pair of perscription sunglasses in the near future.

AND, if you’ve never ordered from Firmoo before, they have a First Pair Free program you should check out!

Disclosure: Firmoo sent me the glasses for free in exchange for a review.

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September 25, 2012 · 6:31 AM

TLC Book Tour: Before the Rain by Luisita López Torregrosa

Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Revolution
by Luisita López Torregrosa
Published 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review copy received from publisher via TLC Book Tours
Read September 2012
228 pages

In the years since that first letter came, postmarked New Delhi and written on pale lavender Claridges Hotel stationery, I have begun this story a hundred times, and each time I was afraid. (p. 3)

So begins Luisita López Torregrosa’s engaging memoir Before the Rain, and as soon as read that first line I knew I was in for a treat. The book tells the story of her love affair with a woman: fellow journalist Elizabeth Whitney, as well as a place: Manila, Philippines.

Torregrosa is a former editor at the New York Times and has the writing skills to uphold the  reputation of that venerable institution. Her writing is at its best when she is setting a scene, and the reader will find herself transported. For instance, in a passage where she imagines what Elizabeth is seeing on assignment in New Delhi:

There was an earthen hue to the city: colonial grays against the stark desert red of government mausoleums gave New Delhi an austerity far removed from the steel and glass and flashing neon of the modern world. Deeper into the city, Old Delhi reeked of death. Filthy alleys, foul food markets, vegetables and spoiled meat and chickens spread out in the muck. Flies crawled over everything, and children with runny noses and muddy hands, moaning and whining, pulled at your clothes, kissing your feet. Multitudes spilling out from crumbling buildings, from stores, from buses, from brothels and mosques, taking up every centimeter of city space, all yelling, gesticulating, chattering and chanting in one momental human chorus. There were no brilliant colors, only a pastel wash over all of it against a soil the shade of dried blood. (p. 24)

Descriptions like this appear throughout the book and were my favorite parts. I didn’t have to take notes while reading because the only word that would come to me when I read those passages was ‘lush.’ I was swept away again when Torregrosa travels to Manila later on to be with Elizabeth, and I could feel the love and comfort the author felt within the city. As a travel memoir, and even as a love story for Manila, Before the Rain is a roaring success.

The love story written about Elizabeth, however, was a bit more illusive. I never got a clear idea of Elizabeth–of who she was, of what Torregrosa loved about her, of what made the author so happy to be with the woman she loved. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Torregrosa was in love with her; it was more that even when I was reading about the happy times the two spent together I could feel Torregrosa’s pain over the end of their relationship.

In fact, the best writing about their relationship comes after they have broken up. It was like the author was finally able to shake off the pain of remembering just how wonderful it was to be together and felt more comfortable remembering the hard times. Despite the reserve in these parts, I never doubted the love the two women shared.

Before the Rain is a quiet memoir full of lush, lovely, and at times transcendent writing. I bookmarked the hell out of it.
Grade: B

Recommended: If you enjoy travel memoirs and/or heart-felt love stories.

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September 19, 2012 · 8:49 AM

Review: Starting From Here by Lisa Jenn Bigelow


Starting From Here
by Lisa Jenn Bigelow
Published 2012 by Amazon Children’s Publishing
Review copy won via Goodreads First Reads giveaway
Read August 2012
282 pages

I broke one of my very strict reading rules by entering the giveaway for this book. The blurb for Starting From Here starts off with:

Sixteen-year-old Colby Bingham’s heart has been broken too many times. Her mother is dead, her truck driver father is always away, and her almost girlfriend just dumped her for a guy.

Normally any mention of a) a dead mom, b) a newly straight ex-girlfriend and, to a lesser extent, c) an absent dad, is enough to send me running for the hills. Or clicking over to a different book page on Goodreads. You know, whatever fits the circumstances. I’m the girl who gets text messages from friends letting me know when the books they are reading contain any mention of Mom Death (MD), even if I’ve never mentioned any intent to read those books. You could say that I’m a bit more sensitive about that topic than your average Jill.

Based on that, I probably should have passed on this little book. The thing was, uh, I really liked the cover? (I have the best reasons for choosing books.) So I entered the giveaway and I won and I read it and, luckily, I only cried a little.

There is a lot more to Colby’s story than the death of her mother–I’ll get to that in a minute–but I want to talk a bit about the way that loss is presented in this book. The struggle with the grief and absolute awfulness of losing your mother as a teenager as described in Starting From Here is amazingly realistic and  honest. For instance, Colby didn’t come out to her mother before she died , and when Colby has this conversation after she starts to date a new girl:

“Well, congratulations, Colby. You deserve a nice girl.”

“A nice girl,” I repeated. “Who are you, my mother?”

The words just slipped out, and I felt a little jolt in my gut, like an elevator dropping two inches. I wanted to believe that Mom would like Amelia. I wanted to believe she’d be cheering for me, too. But I didn’t know–and I never would. (p. 185)

I maaaaay have teared up a bit there. The mentions of her mom and the pain of missing her were the highlight of the novel for me, partly because they bear a resemblance to my own experience, but mostly because they capture those emotions so well.

The real focus of Starting From Here is Colby’s relationships with her father, who is absent most days of the week for his long-distance trucking job, and Mo, a stray dog she adopts after she saves him when Mo is hit by a car. Through taking care of Mo, Colby begins the healing process and meets her new love interest, Amelia. Colby’s best friend, Van, is struggling with being a constant baby-sitter for his nephew and trying to have a social life. The Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at Colby’s school is planning a dance. Oh, and Colby also has a complicated friendship with the local veterinarian, who has marital problems.

Needless to say, there’s a lot going on here, and it takes away from the best parts of the book: the handling of grief after Colby’s mom’s death, father/daughter relationships, and Colby’s rediscovery of herself through Max and Amelia and Van. The writing is stilted at points and sometimes reminded me of the writing you might find in an early 1990s YA book, but overall, I was satisfied and glad I took a chance on a book with the dreaded Mom Death.

Grade: B

Recommended: Particularly for the deft handling of Post-MD emotions, but also as a solid YA novel with a variety of LGBT characters. Oh, and there’s an endearing dog who doesn’t die.

(Many thanks to Tasha for reading a draft of this post and keeping me from deleting it, as I often do when I write things.)

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June 3, 2012 · 4:02 PM

Review & Giveaway: The Letter Q edited by Sarah Moon

The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves
Edited by Sarah Moon with contributing editor James Lecesne
Published 2012 by Arthur A. Levine Books (imprint of Scholastic)
Hardcover received for review from the publisher
Read May 2012
281 pages

Summary From Publisher: In this anthology, sixty-four award-winning authors and illustrators such as Michael Cunningham, Amy Bloom, Jacqueline, Woodson, Terrence McNally, Gregory Maguire, David Levithan, and Armistead Maupin, make imaginative journeys into their pasts, telling their younger selves what they would have liked to know then about their lives as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people. Through stories, in pictures, with bracing honesty, these are words of love, messages of understanding, reasons to hold on for the better future ahead. They will tell you things about your favorite authors that you never knew before. And they will tell you about yourself.

Sixty four LGBT writers contributed to this anthology! If that doesn’t help you realize that We Are Everywhere, I don’t know what will.

If someone were to write a heartbreaking YA novel about me, they’d set it in my sixteenth year, the year my mother died and I started realizing I might be gay and Everything Changed Forever. So maybe it’s a little understandable when I tell you that the idea of writing to my sixteen year-old self is overwhelming. Oh, to swoop in on teenage me and let her know she makes it out of that terrible house, that terrible town, finds love, and spends her spare time writing a book blog and “entertaining” friends with Nixon facts.

As an adult, reading The Letter Q was more a thought experiment into what I’d say to teenage me than the stated intent of an anthology marketed to teens to remind them that, well, it gets better.  I certainly can’t argue with that message.

I do have to point out that although the summary and the jacket copy mention that the authors are “telling their younger selves what they would have liked to know then about their lives as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people,” not a single contributor overtly mentions their experience as a trans person.

At its best, The Letter Q is an excellent companion anthology to Dan Savage and Terry Miller’s It Gets Better, and for those of us who are no longer teenagers, it’s a great mental exercise in “how could I help my teenage self?”

“How are you going to mail a letter to twenty years ago?” she said.
“I don’t know, ” I told her, finishing the sentence on the page. “But wouldn’t it be terrible, the day comes we learn how to ship something back in time, and we’ve got nothing to send? So first I thought I’d get the package ready. Next I’ll worry about the postage.”
How many times had I said to myself, it’s too bad I didn’t know this at age ten, if only I had learned that at twelve, what a waste to understand, twenty years late!
–p 24, The Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach

Okay, I admit, Richard Bach has absolutely no connection to The Letter Q other than the coincidental circumstance wherein I am reading The Bridge Across Forever and I came across this quote and it seemed fitting.

Favorite Quote (From The Letter Q this time): 

You see, love doesn’t end despair. It deepens the poignancy of it by opening your eyes to what there is to lose. — p. 59, Adam Haslett

Grade: B-

Suggested further reading:  It Gets Better edited by Dan Savage and Terry Miller; How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity edited by Michael Cart; Am I Blue? Coming Out From the Silence edited by Marion Dane Bauer

Giveaway!

Scholastic has kindly offered to give two people copies of The Letter Q and an “It Gets Better” t-shirt beneffiting the It Gets Better Project! To enter, just fill out this Google form. Winners will be announced June 10th! (Sorry, this giveaway is U.S. only.)

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