Release date 19 February 2024
Paperback and digital through all the usual online retailers
Maggie survived an apocalypse of hungry shadows by becoming invisible, only to drown during a violent telepathic assault.
Living on the edge of Bloemfontein, in South Africa, Maggie scavenges for scraps and grapples with the unreality, a collection of strange visions and slippery thoughts caused by the attack. When she's approached by strangers who claim she can destroy the shadow monsters, Maggie faces a dilemma: are these people real, and if so, how can she ensure they stay with her forever?
The Invisible Girl is about seeing the world differently, and society's tendency to 'other' people who make them uncomfortable. Many different ideas and experiences inspired this story: life in a backwater city, victim shaming and the stigma surrounding mental health issues, and the search for community in a world that doesn't tolerate strangeness well.
The Invisible Girl
"What makes this book so good is the skill with which Farley handles Maggie’s mental issues. It’s all told from her point of view, and the way in which Farley shows her thought processes drifting back, and forth between reality and fantasy is staggering. ... To tell such a story in just 99 pages, and tell it this well is an amazing achievement, and I recommend The Invisible Girl highly."
Parsec, Dave Brzeski
"The Invisible Girl is hardly a book at all. Rather, it is a dream, a sequence of unrealities, complex as a maze - or a mind - and as constructive and disintegrative as imagination itself. All held together by quiet human truths. There is something claustrophobic and oppressive, heavy about Maggie's reality and her lack of a handle on it; her mind is so fly-away and nebulous, with sequences of vision and thought streams so mercurial and arborescent, they feel utterly prophetic. Nothing can be trusted, her perceptions most of all. This book is an incredible feat of story at its finest from C L Farley, glorious and wildly imaginative. A kaleidoscope of imagery feeding on you with its proboscis, like an extradimensional moth with a wonderland inside her, The Invisible Girl is a truly special read, made of dizzying, disorienting magic."
Knicky L Abbott, Tanglewood
"The Invisible Girl is an intelligent and challenging fantasy novella that forces us to think about how we and others see the world and start to consider how those neurodivergent worldviews work and also have to be navigated in our own world. It’s a story that encourages empathy. Highly recommended!"
Runalong The Shelves
"CL Farley is a South African author of speculative and neurodiverse stories, and The Invisible Girl sews these together in a teasing novella of poetic richness that refuses encapsulation. As you extend some licence to this story, suspend your desire for a neat wrapping, you fall into a world of engaging with difference and finding brilliance. For lovers of weird and startle. This tale will dizzy you with questions and flood you with wonderment."
Aurealis #170
