We Do What We Do in the Dark
'A haunting study of solitude and connection' Meg Wolitzer
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'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
'Exceptional . . . has flashes of Sally Rooney's CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS, or Halle Butler's THE NEW ME. Sometimes it's erotic, sometimes it's devastating' New York Times
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.
'A gorgeous storyteller, Hart is gifted with a poet's precision, blending image and idea. Sensual and wise, this novel channels the melancholic exhilaration of dangerous love' - Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
'Guaranteed to wow' Oprah Daily
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hart debuts with a transfixing queer coming-of-age novel about a woman's affair with a much older professor. Mallory Green is in her first year at a college on Long Island shortly after her mother's death from cancer in 2008. There, she becomes fixated on a never-named woman who teaches children's literature. The professor, who is brusque but encouraging in their conversations, invites Mallory over for dinner. Her husband is away, and she makes plain her own attraction to Mallory. Despite feeling "embarrassed, as if she'd written an intense journal entry that she now had to read aloud," Mallory plunges into an affair with her. The woman ends it when her professor husband returns at the end of the semester, leaving Mallory floundering as she attempts to date a male student and later drifts through postgraduation life in New York City. A flashback to Mallory's youth traces her close friendship with a neighbor girl, saturated with frustrated desire. The professor's reappearance four years after graduation, just as Mallory is settling into a new relationship, opens old wounds. Mallory's intense interiority and self-consciousness will remind readers of Sally Rooney's work, and Hart's prose is delicate and piercing. This is auspicious and breathtaking.
