It wasn't until I'd finished reading The microcosm by Maureen Duffy, and was looking for cover pictures on librarything, that I realised I had read another VMC by her, the partly autobiographical, That's how it was. And suddenly, I liked the novel a whole lot more, because it fitted in with that piece of writing, rather than being a seemingly random look at working class life.
The Microcosm is a book about relationships between women, and how they are forced by the ways of society to conceal that they are lesbians. Sadie works in a factory, Stevie is a PE teacher (I liked her sections best, always being interested in schools).
Most of the book is written in streams of consciousness, in different styles for each of the characters. I found that a little difficult to get into, particularly the one that lacked any capitalisation or proper grammer. But I did think that the characters were vividly drawn, and as I had misremembered the book as being one of short stories, it was a better read than I was anticipating.
This book has only been published once by Virago, in an original green edition.
And there's more information about Maureen Duffy on her website here. I'm actually curious now to seek out her non VMC works.
No comments:
Post a Comment