num_pages: 224
description: May Sarton's ninth novel explores a woman's struggle to reconcile the claims of life and art, to transmute passion and pain into poetry. As it opens, Hilary Stevens, a renowned poet in her seventies, is talking with Mar, an intense young man who has sought her out and whose passionate despair reminds her of herself when young. Mar has had an unhappy love affair with a man. Bewildered by both his sexuality and his writing talent, he flings his anguish against Hilary s brusque, sympathetic intelligence."
language: English
title: Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing
titlecomplete: Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing
genres: Literary Fiction, Fiction, Gay, Classics, Lesbian Fiction, Queer, Lesbian, Literature, Novels, LGBT
ratings_count: 655
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company