Working Hot

by Mary Fallon

"Working Hot - with its uncompromising, street-wise vision of love, passion, lust - carves out a new space for women's writing in Australian literature. Nothing like it has been published here before. It is an erotic, pornographic, cynical, sad and witty representation of life in the raw; a book whose rhythms follow those of lovemaking, a meandering through naked bodies and raw words, bringing with it the pleasure of exploration and movement. Toto, Freda, Peach, One Iota, Kitty Trinkets are ourselves and women we all know. At the same time they are exotic and bizarre exploreres of the outer regions of women's experience, fringe dwellers on the edges of public, social life." - Elizabeth Grosz

Genres: Queer, Fiction, Poetry

289 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[P · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is impossible to come by. i read an excerpt of the work in "sexy bodies; the strange carnalities of feminism" back in 2004 and have only recently managed to get a copy of my very own. this book is not for everyone - it's difficult to read (it's experimental), lots of lesbian sex (not always pretty) and contains quite a few references to Sydney landmarks (originally published in Australia). BUT if you can handle all of that, you're in for an incredible feminist perspective focused on lesbian relationships in a patriarchal society.

[Liza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this because Emily Roysdon referenced it. I was not getting into it, then got a little drunk and loved it.

[Clem McNabb · Rating 4 out of 5]

crazy book...... so fun. Australian women in the 90s were doing freaky things with books.... so awesome and moving. I did get lost in some sections, but I think that is the point. Some of the lines were so original, whole sections where she is really inventing the wheel. The part about her fathers house being a mansion, but no room for her. All the parts about Freda and Toto fighting in circles, in myths, talking to each other over all the other sections of the book. Most fun book I have read in a while. When she describes having sex with a man in an alley - that he has 'built you like a ship in a bottle'.
Or Freda telling Toto; 'I sent my love to you via and vis-avis the moon in Seville, Toto.'

'life could have been a great thing
with wings
instead of a small thing with mouths'

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

a largely unread formally experimental lesbian novel from late 80s australia sounds cool to me, but i struggled to really get much out of this, probably because most of it is written in verse(with occasional dips into prose as well as play script and libretto forms) and i am very much not a verse guy. i did enjoy the parts where she writes streams of unattributed aussie slang filled dialogue, and the text is honeycombed with quotations from some great writers(e.g. jean genet, marguerite young, among others). i imagine a queer or trans person might get more out of the book's content than me as well, as there's some stuff in there that still feels quite topical in 2025 from my limited knowledge of such things.

[Maisie · Rating 1 out of 5]

a bit too experimental for me

[Dani Ringrose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unlikely to have read this or stuck with it if I wasn't studying it as part of my gender lit course at uni.

Another experimental pastiche-lit feminist text that I probably would've obsessed over if I'd read it at the time of publication/in my late teens. And yet another where individual passages, phrasings and stylistics were far more interesting than the work as a whole.

[Marielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

whatever happened to this writer? Did she write other books?

[Julie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rated it as hated it. Sorry.