Why is it that the words of female sexuality – and of female anatomy – are either rendered taboo or fetishised in our society ? Vagina. Clitoris. Vulva. Menstruation. Compared to “cock”, there is a different quality in these words. A frisson of shock and challenge. And that is a frisson which Broder does not…
Category: Women’s Prize
Circe, Madeline Miller
Divine days fall like water from a cataract, and I had not learned yet the mortal trick of counting them.
My Sister, the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite
Next up, from the Women’s Prize Longlist came Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, an interesting parallel to Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater. It is an intriguing little novel – a mere 240 pages, for those for whom that is relevant, not much more than a day or weekend’s read – and remarkably effective in the…
Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi
I have lived many lives inside this body.
I lived many lives before they put me in this body.
I will live many lives when they take me out of it.
Melmoth, Sarah Perry
Look! It is winter in Prague: night is rising in the mother of cities and over her thousand spires. Look down at the darkness around your feet, in all the lanes and alleys, as if it were a soft black dust swept there by a broom; look at the stone apostles on the old Charles Bridge, and at all the blue-eyed jackdaws on the shoulders of St. John of Nepomuk. Look!
30 Day Book Challenge: Day 13!
Day 13, unlucky for some perhaps, brings with it a terribly arbitrary category: A book with a colour in the title. And, yes, I am anglicising the spelling of colour. And in my head, I am thinking “correcting” when I wrote “angliscising”! Okay, well let’s generate a list and celebrate the joys of modern technology:…
Snap, Belinda Bauer
It’s that time of year again, the Man Booker Longlist has been released and I do try to keep.up to date with them – as I do with the Costa and Women’s Prize lists. Sometimes they can be a bit hit-and-miss, sometimes a little pretentious, but generally a good addition to my TBR list and…
Home Fires, Kamila Shamsie
With two stories in the news today – Safir Boular, at 18, being the youngest girl to be convicted of terrorism offences; and Alia Ghanem speaking of her son. Osama bin Laden – about terrorism and the legal system and family, the importance and relevance of a book like Home Fire is painfully apparent. The…
Weekly Round Up: 26th June 2018
As we continue to slog through exam marking, the time available for reading has alas dropped and the wakefulness and attention span when the time arrives is also limited! I am continuing to listen to Jessie Burton’s The Muse on the journeys into and out of work and enjoying the characters of Odelle and Olive. It isn’t…
See What I Have Done, Sarah Schmidt
Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one. Oh, Sarah Schmidt can write! What a strange strange thing to start a review with! But there is writing and there is writing and Sarah Schmidt can write! Not only can she create a…
