Jane Vandenburgh

A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century

Jane Vandenburgh’s eventful childhood went spectacularly awry as her mother became increasingly unstable and her architect father—arrested repeatedly in gay bars in L.A.—committed suicide. She then went to live with an aunt and uncle who already had four kids and issues of their own. From these beginnings, this cultural history as coming-of-age story is launched.
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The Physics of Sunset

Published in 1999 to rave reviews, this is a smart, witty, sadly ironic story of neighbors in Berkeley who become lovers. The novel explores the notion that even a doomed passion may have a place in a person’s spiritual life. This story has been called “the erotic novel for intellectuals.”
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Failure to Zigzag

Continuously in print since its first publication in 1989, Jane Vandenburgh’s first novel tells the story of Charlotte Black as she grows up fatherless in a crazy family. Set in Southern California in the 1960s, the book paints a vivid portrait of Katrinka Ainsworth, Charlotte’s more-than-haphazard absentee mother, whose real career veers between carnival ventriloquist and mental patient.
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