My Lesbian Husband

Thoughtfully mapping the landscape of love and commitment outside the legal and societal comfort zone of state-sanctioned marriage, Borich repeatedly asks Linnea, her lover of ""twelve years and counting"": ""Are we married?"" It's not an accusation, a manipulative device or a pointed query so much as an attempt to probe what it means to be in love and to share a life for many years without the social benefits and familial recognition granted to Borich's two married younger brothers. Not merely another queer commentary (or diatribe) on marriage, this memoir is foremost a graceful and compelling rumination on love. In the course of her paean to Linnea, and using their life together on Portland Avenue in Minneapolis as a kind of metaphor, Borich ponders how she got to this place in her life. A recovered substance abuser who once spiraled perilously downward, devoid of any focus beyond hanging out, Borich is truly in recovery, a partner in a love that literally reconfigures her existence. Elucidating a host of lesbian issues from the butch-femme dynamic to ""serial non-monogamy"" to changing sexual politics, Borich also addresses more global concerns, such as neighborhood confraternity, racism and violence. Though the narrative trajectory sags a bit during the endless idyll of Borich's love (which has no downside and is never punctuated by disagreements, except in the first year when a psychic led the author astray), this tale of heart and home and what it means to find both in a tough and alienating world offers many pleasures. (Sept.)