Reception
Rule's first novel received warm praise from literary critics who described it as, "an intelligent novel, not afraid of ideas, and not committed to them overdiagrammatically." Rule's prose did not sensationalize the relationship between Evelyn and Ann, choosing a detached method of writing one reviewer noted, "Miss Rule is so arbitrary in her depiction of the major characters' psyche-searching and so sketchy in her description of minor figures that the reader is apt to have little empathy with anyone." One reviewer cautioned potential readers that despite the lack of sensationalism, "The Desert of the Heart is not recommended to those who find sexual perversion an uncomfortable subject."
Desert of the Heart was highly recommended by Gene Damon in The Ladder, who called it "a symbolic delight."
Rule remembered the mail she got from women who read the book. "I got a huge amount of fan mail which I didn't expect. I thought movie stars got fan mail. People were writing things like you are the only person in the world who could possibly understand who I am, how I feel, if I'm not able to talk to someone I'm going to kill myself...it just felt to me overwhelming and depressing that there was so much fear and so much self-hatred and so much loneliness."
It tied for 10th place on a list of top ten gay novels by Bibliofemme, an Irish book club.
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