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The first line of Michelle Hart’s debut novel, We Do What We Do In The Dark, is both a brief description of the plot and a teasing oversimplification. “When Mallory was a freshman in college, she had an affair with a woman twice her age,” reads the introductory sentence. If that sounds like the perfect backdrop for a coming-of-age melodrama, well, it is. But it’s also more than that.

Those familiar with lesbian and queer media will likely understand the subgenre the novel’s premise is referencing. The lesbian age-gap story (and specifically, the teacher/student relationship) has become canonized within queer film and literature, going at least as far back as the 1931 film Mädchen in Uniform, often considered the first explicitly lesbian film. Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, and its filmic adaptation, Carol, is probably the most famous example of this dynamic, and depicts the well-worn premise of coming of age through a romantic affair. 

When we first meet Mallory, the main character in We Do What We Do In The Dark, she is a freshman in college. The year is 2008, and Mallory’s mother died of cancer just months before her enrollment. She first sees the professor at the gym, and when they finally meet, Mallory feels inexplicably drawn to her. It’s a feeling she’s unable to shake, even for years to come.

We might be tempted to place We Do What We Do In The Dark within this lineage of forbidden romance, but in many ways, it stands on its own. First of all, the woman Mallory has an affair with may be a professor, but she is not her professor. (This detail may seem insignificant, but it does matter to the professor.) Though we come to know a number of intimate details about this professor throughout the book, we never learn her name. Mallory only ever refers to her as “the woman,” which serves to both anonymize her and situate her as a figure known only to Mallory. 

The narrative structure of the novel gives us a better sense of what’s really going on. The book is split into four, non-chronological sections that depict different time periods in Mallory’s life. The first two sections follow Mallory’s initial meeting with the woman and tracks their affair as it progresses during Mallory’s first year at school. The third section goes back to Mallory’s childhood, exploring her friendship with her best friend, Hannah, and her struggles to come to terms with her mother’s illness. When Hannah leaves for college a year before Mallory, Mallory develops a close-knit relationship with Hannah’s mother, as both women reckon with their own deep-seated loneliness. The last section of the book follows Mallory in her post-college years as she attempts to exist outside of the woman’s orbit, despite the fact that she feels the woman’s influence in almost every facet of her life. 

The novel is something of a slow-burn, and Hart’s artful structure reveals to the reader how we might interpret Mallory’s experience. Certainly, Mallory’s relationship with the woman is central to the story, but it is not the story. We Do What We Do In The Dark is a romance, yes, but more precisely, it is a book about loneliness and grief. The grief of losing her mother is still fresh when Mallory first meets the woman, and the woman has her own pain to contend with, pain that tends to delimit her relationship with the world around her. Mallory spends the entire book struggling with how to connect with other people, and she believes she’s found the answer in the woman. 

In the third section of the book, which depicts Mallory’s childhood and adolescence, we begin to understand that this sense of loneliness has always been with Mallory. Mallory’s feeling of loneliness stems not only from the fact that she is queer (although that is a significant part of it), but also because this idea of secrecy, of being separate, has seeped into every aspect of her life. Her mother didn’t want anyone to see her as someone with an illness, and Mallory has always found it difficult to imagine anyone perceiving her fully. She worries people are only attracted to her because they can sense that she’s miserable, a state of being she has long identified with but struggles to disentangle herself from. She feels a gratifying sense of shared loneliness with the woman, but this doesn’t cure her of the feeling in the ways she expects it to. 

Hart’s cutting prose reflects Mallory’s misanthropic perspective. Her sardonic, sharp voice is delightful in its unruffled candor. Mallory is self-deprecating without being self-hating, which makes her internal monologue all the more absorbing. Mallory sees herself as an outsider, which means her perspective is analytical, rather than empathetic. While she may come off as aloof and clinical at times, this language allows the reader to better understand how she processes her emotions. We get the sense that she is both mature and childlike all at once. Her mother’s illness and death forced her to grow up quickly, but it also stunted her emotionally. Hart slowly reveals this dichotomy to us through Mallory’s relationship with the woman, who is similarly complex. 

Perceptions of relationships like these have changed since the #MeToo era, but the novel itself doesn’t seem particularly interested in really delving into these contemporary questions. This is a good thing, and, indeed, in the context of the novel, the right thing. Mallory does not conceptualize her relationship with the woman as abusive or coercive in any way, so it wouldn’t make sense for the novel to condemn the relationship either. Significantly, the book also begins in the late aughts, before conversations around sex and relationships had become what they are today.

The novel takes pains to ensure the woman is not some murky figure without her own desires and motivations. She, too, is a fully fleshed-out character with her own impulses, even if she always remains at least somewhat mysterious to both Mallory and the reader. We learn at one point that, as much as Mallory feels this way, the woman also finds her own sense of self-worth buoyed by Mallory’s presence in her life. “I’ve missed the way you look at me,” the woman tells Mallory after a period of separation. 

The woman is not a villainous figure, nor is she heroic. Though we may never truly know the entirety of her feelings for Mallory – certainly, they are complex – she’s a figure with a lot of presence, despite her seemingly calculated restraint in regards to the relationship (and her continual namelessness). We also come to learn, if implicitly, that the woman is not as mature as her age might imply. For one thing, she began an affair with an 18-year-old, something someone happy and content with who they were and their status in life would likely not do. 

Though Mallory reads her apparent indifference and disinterest in other people as boldness and maturity, it seems that the woman may not have much figured out, after all. Indeed, in the last section of the book, the woman relays her concerns about the fact that Mallory took everything she said so seriously – she seems to feel remorseful that Mallory tried so hard to define herself through the woman, when she herself isn’t comfortable with who she is or what she's become. The woman doesn’t feel that she’s worthy of such admiration. Regardless, Mallory can’t seem to help herself. 

It might seem contradictory that a book would connect loneliness and desire in this way, but that is part of Hart’s ingenuity. For Mallory, this particular brand of queer loneliness is enduring, but it’s not impenetrable. The answer may not be within other people, but it is with other people, Mallory comes to learn. In Hart’s focused, refined debut, there’s nothing to do but reflect on the things that have shaped you and keep on moving.

You can purchase We Do What We Do In The Dark at Bookshop or at your local independent bookstore.

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