What is gay fiction?

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The first "gay fiction" I ever read was by Iris Murdoch, and consisted of a handful of playfully electrifying passages from "The Bell" and "A Fairly Honourable Defeat."

Since Murdoch was neither a gay man nor, to my knowledge, a closet lesbian, the question arose: Can persuasive gay or lesbian fiction be written by a straight writer? For that matter, can convincing straight fiction be written by gays or lesbians? And if the answer is "yes," then what is gay fiction? Three new novels raise the same question in a thoroughly rewarding manner.

Foremost among them is Emma Donoghue's "Slammerkin," a historical novel based on a murder case in 18th-century England, in which a clothes-besotted servant girl kills her dressmaker mistress.

"Slammerkin" by Emma Donoghue Harcourt, $24

Donoghue's credentials as a lesbian historian ("Passions Between Women") and a fictional chronicler of "rather tempestuous lesbian relationships" (her words) couldn't be more solid. Yet "Slammerkin" can't really be described as "lesbian fiction."

Its heroine, Mary Saunders, is an impoverished London schoolgirl "plagued by vague dreams of a better life." For the sake of a pretty red ribbon, she tumbles into prostitution at the age of 14. While a fellow streetwalker shows Mary the ropes, historian Donoghue shows her readers just how mean the streets of 1760s London were.

Mary builds up her defenses quickly: "It wasn't herself Mary sold. ... She just hired out a dress called skin." But no teenager can inhabit the world she does without soon landing in trouble.

After her health breaks down and bad debts endanger her life, Mary flees London for Monmouth, on the English-Welsh border. There, in the town her mother came from, she gets her second chance and almost makes it work. But "almost" isn't good enough.

"Slammerkin" (Donoghue defines the word as both "a loose gown" and "a loose woman") is a novel of alternately subtle and brutal power.

Its London scenes serve as ghoulish showpieces, but its Monmouth-set chapters, with their gradual unveiling of how Mary's resentment of her servant's status builds toward violence, are even more masterfully written. Donoghue, without once sounding preachy, conveys much about class antagonism and women's plight in 18th-century England, while drawing complex characters into fated, volatile collision with one another.

It's interesting to note that, despite all her sexual experience with men - or more likely because of it - Mary's warmest relations are with women.

Is this, then, a covert lesbian novel? Not really. Mary is simply too young and damaged to be labeled one way or the other.

As for Donoghue, Mary appears to have captured her imagination so thoroughly that her own sexual orientation, if it has had an influence on the book, is operating at a subliminal level.

In Anthony Giardina's "Recent History," the gay-straight dynamic is reversed. Giardina, a straight writer, portrays a possibly gay or bisexual narrator-protagonist tucked inside so many closets that it's difficult keeping track of them.

Italian-American Luca Carcera (think: "incarcerated") is keeping secrets from his mother, dad, uncle, cousins, gay friends, wife and, it would seem, himself.

His father left the family to live with another man when Luca was 12. If Dad could go through the whole business of marrying and fathering a child, only to "become" gay, then where does that leave Luca, whose sexual radar goes on some kind of alert - panic? attraction? - whenever he's in the company of gay men?

"Recent History" by Anthony Giardina Random House, $23.95

Nowhere, it would seem. Or rather, in an emotional state of "willed and careful absence," as he describes it. It's on this foundation of "absence" that Luca attempts to build his marriage, with predictably shaky results.

Giardina slyly parallels Luca's efforts with those of his blue-collar Italian-American family as they, too, try over the years to build themselves into something they may not be: confident lords of their suburban manors. In both cases, Giardina's prose is exquisitely tuned to his characters' hopes, uncertainties and misgivings.

One critic has complained that there must be "better, braver stories" to tell than Luca's, and the book's ending is a little too pat. But given how vast and intricate Luca's closet is, it's surely a territory well worth exploring - whether he gets out of it or not.

On a more satirical note, Kobe-born Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb's "Fear and Trembling" tells a perhaps autobiographical tale of a Japanophile Belgian, also named Amélie, who works in Tokyo and is mesmerized by her boss, "the proud and sublime Miss Mori."

Never mind that Miss Mori is putting Amélie's career quite literally "in the toilet." Amélie still adores her: "There were others she could have martyred. ... I decided that I had been accorded a privilege."

Nothomb merrily lampoons office politics, office romance and East-West cultural differences, as Amélie achieves "invoice serenity" and makes unlikely erotic contact with Miss Mori's computer. Translator Adriana Hunter brings Nothomb's French original into a sharp and sassy English.

"Fear and Trembling" by Amélie Nothomb St. Martin's, $19.95

But is this lesbian fiction? Amélie's attraction to Miss Mori never takes a fleshly turn, so maybe not.

Still, it's far more kinky fun than most coming-out stories. And like Donoghue's and Giardina's books, it seems to sidestep the rules governing who can take on what subject matter.

Gay fiction, straight fiction - what does it matter, so long as it's a good read?