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Moon Madness and Other Stories
is chock-full of delights, shocks and surprises. Overall, a comedy of errors, the prevailing themes of this collection are misunderstanding and ambivalence in intimacy between women.
In the title story, our middle-aged heroine pursues her adolescent desires and learns
a lesson or two on route. In other tales, down-to-earth Bernie meets a spaced-out lady, and is touched by magic in the end; Fat Betty wants to make a meal of the willful Princess Evaleen, (as
the way to a woman's heart is through her stomach). Elsewhere, Wild Horses couldn't keep them apart - but what kept them together? And Maxine suffers unduly for her Unsafe Address.
Throughout the 21 stories and vignettes, women relate intimately
in a passionate mix of love, lust, selfishness, generosity, kindness, cowardice, confusion and dismay. Ambiguity rules the day, with even the account of pre-pubertal sex play, Kid's
Stuff, having a twist in the tale; raising questions of allegiance at an early age.
The longest story is Hannah in My Arms, an enthralling novella of girlhood love, lust and faithlessness in a British single sex
school. (The reader may decide who betrayed whom in the end.) The briefest tale is Saturdaze: a nifty little gem, erotic, and diamond-bright with very sharp edges!
Sharp as a sliver of glass; bitter as aloes; warm as toast and jam; funny as monkeys; and with more than a nod to a lesbian Eros, Moon
Madness and Other Stories crackles jumps and tingles with spite, sarcasm, irony and ardour. You'll want to read it more than once.
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