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Wishbone by Marion Halligan

by
October 1994, no. 165

Wishbone by Marion Halligan

Wishbone by Marion Halligan

by
October 1994, no. 165

The difficulty of a love affair between a young woman and a married man may be its logistics. Where can they go?

These are the opening lines of Wishbone. Already I know that this is a book I want to continue reading, and not just for the promise of sex, romance, and intrigue. I am also attracted by the ‘difficulty’ of knowing just what tone is being taken here, and just who is speaking to me in these words. As well as being thrown immediately into the story, the reader is confronted with this tone – analytic, cool, amused? There is the holding-back of both information and conclusions. There is the emphasis on bodies, their awkwardness, the space they take up, their economics … and later the words and wishes they produce. Knight will say to his lover, Emmanuelle, ‘I thought we could have an affair and just be bodies.’

This is the kind of book you might wish for when you want to be taken out of yourself for a while, in unexpected ways.

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