A Jingle-Jangle Song by Mariana Villa-Gilbert

The lost lesbian novel of the 1960s.

Quirky, sweet, eccentric and filled with the sounds and energies of the era’s counterculture, from a forgotten queer author who deserves to be remembered.

You get fed up singing jingle jangle songs and doing gigs around the country. There’s no time to wonder, no time to lie in the grass and dream. One loses so much: one just isn’t a real person any more.

Late 60s London, folk singer Sarah Kumar arrives to give a concert. She is hot stuff and a hot mess – androgynous, awkward and alluring.  Kumar attends hip parties, sings to her fans and passes out wasted. She is a picture of consummate coolness, hid nervously behind huge sunglasses – a subversive imagining of a strong queer female lead amid the commercial folk boom.

Inside the countercultural throng, Kumar’s life is soon derailed by an encounter with an older woman, the intoxicating Mrs Stankovich. 

Buried in the archives for far too long, A Jingle Jangle Song is the lost queer novel of the late 1960s. Eccentric and atmospheric, sweet and satirical, the novel celebrates how queer desire erupts in unexpected – and unignorable – ways. 

Paperback / 154 pages