A Piece of the Night

by Michele Roberts

First published 1997

Julie moves through her days as the perfect daughter, devoted wife, and caring mother. She attends family dinners, manages household duties, and meets every expectation placed upon her. But Julie harbors other identities that her conventional world cannot contain. She practices ancient rituals, seeks out forbidden lovers, and experiences desires that society labels as madness. These competing selves create an impossible tension. Julie cannot reconcile the woman who bakes dinner with the woman who casts spells, the faithful wife with the passionate seeker of female touch. As these worlds pull her in opposite directions, reality begins to fracture around her. Time itself becomes unstable. Past and present blur together as Julie slips between moments, unable to hold her fragmented life together. She faces a choice between the safety of conformity and the dangerous truth of who she really is.

Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, psychological-thriller, family-drama

Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking

Tropes: fractured-reality, unreliable-narrator

Period: 20th-century, 21st-century

192 pages · Paperback · Womens Pr Ltd

Content warnings: mental-illness

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