ABSTRACT

When Joe Lorenzo discovers his fiancée Silver Dale and her friend Cay Rivers sharing a bath, he declares that the foam-covered duo look “like two desserts”—a remark which wasn’t lost on the London critic Suzanne Moore. In her review for the Labour monthly New Socialist, she observed that Desert Hearts precisely “wants to have its cake and eat it—because all the men are so nice and understanding, because the women are just so gorgeous to look at, any challenge lesbianism might represent is underplayed.”