The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth

Why, when I was your age, we had to walk sixteen miles to get to a lesbian bar. There was no such thing as lesbian chic. We were monsters and we liked it that way. We didn't have famous pregnant lesbian couples on the covers of glossy weekly magazines. We had one quarterly newsprint newsletter--so stapled together, you had to update your tetanus shot just to subscribe. There weren't lesbian bookstores; there were only two lesbian books. That's two copies of one book. And we passed them around like they were the last extant paper products in a post-nuclear winter.

But now. we've got products with the L-word right in the titles. Lesbian is not liberal. Actually liberals of the nineties are the lesbians of the seventies. And our books are now sold in your big mega-super-humungo-so-overwhelming-I'm-having -a-panic-attack-and-leaving-with-nothing-Barnes -and-Ignoble-bookstore/cafe/HMO. Which have forced the mom and mom. or pop and pop gay/lesbian bookstores we had for a minute to shut down or become rainbow tchotchke stores.

I found The History of Lesbian Hair by Mary Dugger (Doubleday), So You Want to be a Lesbian? by Liz Tracey and Sydney Pokorny (St. Martin's Griffin), and Lesbianism Made Easy by Helen Eisenbach (Crown) all by the checkout register at my local mega-store. Right by the Dell Astrology pamphlets. But I bought them at my gay bookstore. Mary Dugger's book is a graphic romp through life, liberty, and the pursuit of lesbian happiness. The cover photo of Mona Lisa in a modified greasy biker haircut is worth the price. The Tracey/Pokorny oeuvre is cheeky and informative, with enough rules to give that best-selling straight rule book a run for its money. Helen Eisenbach's satire is an ennui-laced correction of the notion that being a lesbian is difficult. If you buy them and tie them up with one purple bow you've got a perfect lesbian starter kit and stocking stuffer.

The best book I read all year was The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family, by Suzannah Lessard (Dial Press).

In this mesmerizing story, which unfolds with the compelling force of a mystery novel, Lessard explores how her powerful and infamous great-grandfather, the architect Stanford White, has haunted her family through four generations.

White designed the New York Public Library, Madison Square Garden, the arch in Washington Square Park, and many other major landmarks. (He even acquired the statue attributed to Michelangelo, recently...