The main character of Venus Envy, Mary Frazier Armstrong, is a beautiful, successful thirty-five-year-old businesswoman with a well-kept secret. Although Frazier apparently fits in with her ritzy surroundings in the small but societyobsessed town of Charlottesville, Virginia, she does so at the expense of her personal happiness and integrity, as she has been hiding her lesbianism from everyone save her closest friend, Billy Cicero, a rich, fast-living, gorgeous gay man who is also firmly in the closet, albeit a gold-plated one. Our first view of Frazier is in her hospital bed, where she is presented on the verge of death from an inoperable lung cancer. Although regretful of her early demise, she is portrayed as both brave and generous as she faces death boldly and plans happy surprises in her will for her friends and business associates. Spurred into writing as a way of dealing with any remaining...