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We Do What We Do in the Dark

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We Do What We Do in the Dark

By: Michelle Hart
Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
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About this listen

Mallory sees the woman for the first time at her college gym and is immediately transfixed. As a naturally reserved person who is now reeling from the loss of her mother, Mallory finds herself compelled by the woman's assurance and longs to know her better. Despite the discovery that she is a professor at the college, Mallory finds herself falling into a complicated love affair with the woman, the stakes of which she never quite understands.

In the years that follow, Mallory must come to terms with how the relationship shaped her, for better or worse, and learn to become a part of the world that she sacrificed for the sake of a woman she never truly knew.

In this enthralling debut novel, the complexities of influence, obsession and admiration reveal how desire and its consequences can alter the trajectory of a life.

©2022 Michelle Hart (P)2022 Penguin Audio
Coming of Age Fiction

Critic Reviews

"A beautiful book so filled with sharp longing and perfectly phrased vulnerability that I read it in a reverent hush." (Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby)

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Hmmm

“I’m afraid of being alone and afraid that is the only way I know how to be.”

It’s the most bizarre feeling having my mental, emotional and social self as a younger person communicated in a book. It was like déjà vu but backwards. It was so very similar it felt eerie.

Michelle Hart presented the story in a way that reminded me of queer books from the early 90’s to late 2000’s where the story was said plainly, none of the frills and fluff common in modern queer stories, and I love it! I could describe the author’s talent with words as cunning. Her tools were ordinary words but surgical in its precision in conjuring melancholic feelings and ideas as if reading a soulful poem by Dickinson or Plath.

The Woman, whom the author didn’t bother to name, belied the permanence in Mallory’s life. However transient, it was a needed occurrence for Mallory to find her way through her own happiness and life.

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Some good, some cheesy

My reaction to this book was a bit mixed. It wanders quite a bit … has some cheesy writing moments…. but sort of pulls it together at the end.

What kept grating me was the gay sexual identity stuff really did not gel with the time period. I mean it took place shortly after 2008 when I feel there was a certain level of awareness of queer politics especially in the ivory tower university space. This awkwardness is I think supposed to be a point a tension, but it is just damn clunky.

An erotic thriller set in academia!?!? I’m in! This is not ‘Vladimir’ by Julia May Jonas which was much more clever (though not without its flaws) and really got into the grit of the characters. This narrative gets bogged down in two emotionally retarded people spending a lot of time fumbling around and disconnecting. The author *thinks* they write flinty well but it’s no Sally Rooney.

Sadly no deep interesting connections to class, gender or sexuality… I don’t think class is even mentioned.

It does miss a few tricks and there are some illogical moments. “The woman” is a clean freak who uses public showers at gym? Wait for it - the main character is university educated but didn’t realise that Obama being elected was a significant social change? Like for real?

But I did like the end and the wandering made a bit more sense in the last lap, I guess.

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