What Comes Naturally

15. What Comes Naturally, by Gerd Brantenberg

This humorous, though at times didactic, novel by the Norwegian feminist writer was written in 1973 and concerns the protagonist's coming out as lesbian in 1960's Oslo. Her own ideas of what a woman who loves women is/should be like are upended as she looks for friendship, sex and love, sometimes in the same place, sometimes not.

In her wildly funny and thought-provoking book, Brantenberg points up the contradictions in the idea that being gay isn't "natural". I wonder if, when she wrote this, she had any idea that Norway would one day legalize same-sex marriage?