9 Books About Forbidden Desire

I first read this bisexual classic in high school, and Winterson immediately became my favorite author. The narrator of the novel is in love with a married woman, has affairs with both men and women — and yet you never find out the gender of the narrator themself. It’s poetic, strange, and ahead of its time.

While the details about the main character’s disordered eating in this novel made me incredibly anxious, there’s also something so lush and sensual about the way Border writes about both food and sex, and desire for both of them. An unlikely affair between two women is the main course here, served along with plenty of commentary on diet culture and religion. And also frozen yogurt.

This canonical sapphic favorite offers a kind of survey of queer life in Victorian England — from the narrator’s aching lust for a “masher” (aka drag king), to the most surprising sex scenes you’re likely to encounter in a work of literary historical fiction. A veritable treasure chest of a novel.

I was so delighted from page one by the humor and verve of this novel, which follows Edie, a young Black woman, as she has an affair with an older, married White man who is (allegedly) in an open relationship. The story takes a wild turn when Edie moves in with the man and his wife and child. The social commentary is smart and cutting and/but also, the sex scenes are unforgettable.

This quirky novel awakened in me a deep lust for drafty and problematic farmhouses in upstate New York even though I know that was really not the point — but there’s also a tense and fascinating affair between two women, one of whom is married to a man. It’s vividly written, full of lush detail, and laugh-out-loud funny.

I have to admit I’d never been interested in reading Updike who always just seemed like, you know, one of those old white guys that dudes in your MFA program love. But I “discovered” the Rabbit series recently and guess what? Updike is a Modernist! The writing is gorgeous and poetic! And Rabbit is a character beset by desires for what he can’t have. This manifests in an ill-fated affair with a sometimes-sex worker over the course of a summer while he’s hiding from his pregnant wife. He’s not the most likable character in the world, and yet somehow his story is pretty dang poignant.

This collection of short stories teems with women who lust for what they aren’t supposed to — married men, other women, or even just the taste of freedom (or peach cobbler). The story “Instructions for Married Christian Husbands” is a particular favorite of mine — so extremely funny and sharp, and full of such truths about lust under the patriarchy.

One of the first great pandemic novels to appear, this initially serialized book tells the story of Orpheus, who is queer, disabled, poly, and searching the city for her long lost love, Eurydice. What she finds is a portal that takes her to a lesbian bar in 1930s Paris. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted to live inside of a fictional world as much as I do this one.

Alright, this gender-bending “biography” of a person who is born a man but then one day becomes a woman is, on the page, definitely the least lusty of all of these books. But the way it plays with desire, gender, and sexuality was pretty groundbreaking, And Woolf dedicated it to her secret (ish) lover Vita Sackville-West, whose son later called it “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature.” Which you gotta admit is pretty hot.