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by Finola Moorhead
darkness more visible
Spinifex has just released darkness more visible, a new crime novel from Finola Moorhead (author of Quilt, Remember the Tarantella and Still Murder). But this is by no means your average crime book. For starters, it's very long 650 pages of small print and it just doesn't play out like a crime novel. Oh, there's a dead body ... and a PI (triathlete, Margot Gorman, introduced in Still Murder) but Moorhead believes darkness more visible should be regarded as a serious work of literature. The book you take, she says, is the sort you take on holiday with you to have time to digest, like a Middlemarch or a Dickens'.
Moorhead spent some time in the nineties living in a women's separatist collective and a separatist philosophy underlies the book. There is also a sense that Moorhead had a lot to say and was determined to say it at all costs. The dialogue in particular tends to be on the lengthy side, and the male characters are not a pleasant bunch. But when she self edits, Moorhead is a sharp writer with a lot to say about lesbian culture and queer culture in general. In part she's very funny and refreshingly never worried about political correctness. Overall darkness more visible is worth a look but be warned, it's a long, long book.
Phoebe Everett, MCV, Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Weekly News
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darkness more visible