Divided Publishing

In Thrall

£ 11.99
£ 11.99

In ThrallJane DeLynn

£ 11.99

In Thrall

Jane DeLynn

A dazzling classic of lesbian adolescence.

The Irish Times

Dear Miss Maxfeld . . . What I’m really afraid of is that I am a homosexual human being. I wish you were one too but I don’t think it’s possible there could be so many in one school, do you? Probably there is only one person who is homosexual in one place at one time and that one person (I am afraid) is me . . .

After sixteen-year-old Lynn writes her thirty-seven-year-old English teacher a letter they embark on one of the funniest and saddest love affairs in fiction, shrouded in secrecy and guilt. Set in the year Kennedy was shot, all Lynn knows about “lezbos” is that they wear their hair in crew cuts, buy suits like her father’s, and sprout mustaches over their upper lips. Trying to pass, Lynn continues to neck with her boyfriend and make bigoted jokes with her friends. Feigning innocence with her parents, each night she checks the mirror for tell-tale signs of perversion. Profound, witty, poignant, and highly charged, In Thrall is the first in Jane DeLynn’s trilogy of novels on sexuality and authority. It is as believable in its depiction of a closeted teen as it is heartbreaking.

With an introduction by Colm Tóibín.

  • 978-1-7395161-6-1
  • 21.6 x 13.9 cm
  • 280 pp.
  • Paperback
  • November 2024

About the author

Jane DeLynn is the author of the widely acclaimed novels Leash, Don Juan in the Village, and Some Do. Her novel Real Estate was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, the New York Observer and Tikkun, and she lived in Saudi Arabia as a correspondent for Mirabella and Rolling Stone during the Gulf War. She is also the author of three plays, and wrote the libretto for the children’s opera The Monkey Opera, composed by Roger Tréfousse, which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She lives in Los Angeles.

Endorsements (4)

Flawless comic timing.

Colm Tóibín

All Lynn’s phobias, aversions and hang-ups make her exaggerated but real . . . The great triumph of this novel is that DeLynn has captured the way adolescents felt, talked, and behaved during the early 1960s.

San Francisco Chronicle

A dazzlingly gritty exposure of a girlhood experience usually neglected by both private and public consciousness.

Reba Maybury

In Thrall is a beguiling account of the perversion, angst and ego of adolescence.

The Irish Times

Press (19)

Sweet Days of DisciplineMelissa AndersonBookforum, Winter 20252102/2025
Thrilling and bewilderingLucy ScholesThe TLS, No. 63582407/02/2025
Interview: Jane DeLynn by Taylor Lewandowski Taylor LewandowskiBOMB30/01/2025
Type on PaperEHFM21/01/2025
‘In Thrall’ is a flinty, funny novel about growing upJessica FerriThe Washington Post12/12/2024
"This feeling of uniqueness is part of the pattern": Jane DeLynn's In ThrallEkaterina IvanovaEra Journal, 19, Winter 20241712/2024
A Witty and Ironic Coming-of-Age Novel From 1982Brandon SanchezNew York Magazine's Making It newsletter (ed. Emily Gould)26/11/2024
Sex Cannot Be Taught, Just LearntEd NeedhamStrong Words, 542311/2024
The Strong Words Hot ListStrong Words24/11/2024
Five Books to Read in November 2024Something Curated22/11/2024
In ThrallJ. F.Los Angeles Times19/11/2024
In Thrall (from 2:05:18)Hannah MacInnes in for Ed VaizeyTimes Radio15/11/2024
Jane DeLynn: In ThrallMorgan BeckerThe Whitney Review, 411/2024
The Sheer Gusto of Jane DeLynnColm TóibínThe Nation11/11/2024
To Do: November 6-20Jasmine VojdaniNew York Magazine06/11/2024
A Pretty Girl, a Novel with Voices, and Ring-Tailed LemursSophie Haigney and Olivia Kan-SperlingThe Paris Review01/11/2024
In ThrallAndrew Chan4Columns01/11/2024

Rights

  • North America (Semiotexte)

Dominique: The Case of an Adolescent

£ 13.99
Pre order in Europe UK US
£ 13.99
Pre order in Europe UK US

Dominique: The Case of an AdolescentFrançoise Doltotrans. Ivan Kats, revised by Lionel and Sharmini Bailly

£ 13.99

Dominique: The Case of an Adolescent

Françoise Dolto

trans. Ivan Kats, revised by Lionel and Sharmini Bailly

Dolto’s Dominique is the only case I’ve found that rivals Freud, and brings us up to date, replete with questions of incestuous trauma, repressed sexualities, autism and cognitive disability, and a profound sense for the contradictions of polite society and histories of colonial and racist violence. I love this child and encountering Dolto’s otherworldly voice as an analyst.

Jamieson Webster

While the child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto stands alongside Jacques Lacan as a leading light of the Other French School, she has been little translated and remains curiously unknown in the English-speaking world. First published in 1971, Dominique: The Case of an Adolescent is frank and close to the clinical experience. A masterpiece of the genre, it is at once a granular psychological portrait of a troubled adolescent and his familial inheritance, and a historical case study of French society in the 1960s.

Foreword by Michael Ryzner-Basiewicz.

  • 978-1-7395161-9-2
  • 13 b&w illustrations
  • 21.6 x 13.9  cm
  • 264 pp.
  • Paperback
  • July 2025

About the author

Françoise Dolto (born 6 November 1908, Paris) was a psychoanalyst and paediatrician. Alongside private practice at her home, where she saw adults and children, Dolto practised in four institutions where she saw only children patients: the Polyclinique Ney, the Centre Claude Bernard, the Hôpital Trousseau and the Centre Etienne Marcel. From 1967 to 1969, Dolto answered adult and child listeners of the French radio station Europe No. 1, live and anonymously under the name ‘Docteur X’. The programme enjoyed excellent ratings, but Dolto found dialogue to be hindered by the demands of live broadcasting and advertising. In 1976, she agreed to return to radio with Lorsque l’enfant paraît on France Inter, on the condition that she replied to listeners’ letters, which enabled her to go into depth. The programme was a huge success, and would make her a household name. In 1978 Dolto retired as an adult psychoanalyst: her fame had become such that it distorted the therapeutic relationship with patients. She now devoted herself to prevention, training of young analysts, group and individual supervision, publications, conferences and radio and television broadcasts. She also continued her work with children in the care of the Aide Sociale à l’Enfance, some of whom she received at her home until the end of her life. In 1979, along with a small team, she founded the Maison Verte, a place for early-years socialisation welcoming children from ages zero to four along with their caregivers, for sessions of play and talk. This model spread throughout France and Europe, to Russia, Armenia and Latin America. Dolto is the author of more than a dozen books, and several essays, interviews and seminars. In English, her books have been translated as Psychoanalysis and Pediatrics (Routeledge, 2013) and The Unconscious Body Image (Routledge, 2022). Françoise Dolto died on 25 August 1988 in Paris.

Photo: Alécio de Andrade

About the translators (3)

Ivan Kats (1926–2008), naturalised American, worked as a translator, editor, teacher, publisher and journalist in France and the United States. He graduated with an MA from Yale University, New Haven, in 1969. In 1970 he founded the Obor Foundation, dedicated to the publication and dissemination of books to book-poor countries, which he directed until his retirement in 1996.

Lionel Bailly is a practising psychoanalyst of the Association Lacanienne Internationale, an academic associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and a child and adolescent psychiatrist. Trained in medicine and psychiatry at Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, he is honorary professor at University College London Psychoanalysis Unit where he is particularly involved in the doctoral school. He led the Sainte-Anne Hospital Centre’s biopsychopathology unit before moving to London in 2000. Bailly is the author of two books, one on psychotrauma in children (in French) and Lacan: A Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld, 2009).

Sharmini Bailly is a psychoanalyst (member, British Psychoanalytical Society) and a senior member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation. She translated Françoise Dolto’s The Unconscious Body Image (Routledge 2022) and has edited two books on Lacanian theory. She works in the NHS and in private practice, and teaches and supervises psychodynamic/psychoanalytic practitioners.

Rights

  • French (Seuil)