Category: Gender

Mothers watching over their offspring from a distance: Zeina & She Would Be King

21/5/2019

Two novels, set primarily in the continent of Africa, in which women are separated from a child and must resort to looking on from a distance. In the first, set in Egypt, Bodour can’t admit that a famous singer is her illegitimate child. But at least they’re in the same city. And both alive. Which is not the case in the second novel, set in Jamaica, the USA and Liberia, where the deceased mother’s voice is carried on the wind. So she does get to guide her son and his two companions, all of whom have supernatural gifts. Intrigued? Read on!

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Fascism in the ascendant: The Fourth Shore & In the Full Light of the Sun

16/5/2019

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I have no hesitation in recommending both of these literary novels, intriguing stories set against the rise of fascism leading up to the Second World War. The first is a coming-of-age story set in Italy and Libya; the second about vested interests in the art world set in Berlin.

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Writing isms: would you risk causing offence in your fiction? #amwriting

13/5/2019

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Much as I despair of living in a country where the birth of a baby is headline news – ditto his naming the following day – I do try to bear in mind that the extended family I involuntarily support via my taxes is made up of human beings, and therefore worthy of my respect. I sincerely hope I’m incapable of channeling my rage at inequality and unearned privilege into a bizarre racist tweet, as a BBC DJ did recently. How could he not know, as he has claimed, that an image of the latest royal baby as an ape would cause offence? But, in reflecting the world as I see it in my fiction, with darkness as well as light, I do risk inadvertently offending my readership, especially in portraying the isms from which, in my other identities, I’m at pains to distance myself.

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Domestic triangles: Disturbance & Stanley and Elsie

10/5/2019

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Two novels in which a third adult joins the household of a married couple and forms a strong relationship with one or both partners. Both are set in English villages, but map very different terrain. In the first, a wife befriends a young student, but the relationship turns out not to be as innocent as it first appears. In the second, set between the two world wars, a live-in maid skilfully manages to negotiate between an artist couple’s bickering, but she can’t stop the breakup of the marriage when the husband laps up another woman’s flattery.

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The Enigma of Gender

23/4/2019

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Women love shoes and shopping, or so the stereotype goes, but since I prefer tramping the moors in my walking boots, I can’t be one of those. But, given that I’m not so keen on getting drunk while watching football, I can’t be a man. That’s the problem with binary categories, they don’t allow for “a bit of both”. They reduce the world to black or white, no room for shades of grey.

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Kings behaving badly: Lux & Love in the Kingdom of Oil

16/4/2019

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Two novels in which kings have their way: in the first, the Hebrew King David and English King Henry appear as characters; in the second, we see the impact of the illiterate despot who rules the unnamed Arab country in the miserable lives of the women.

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Schooldays: Agnes Grey & The Governesses

26/3/2019

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Pity the poor governess: an educated woman obliged to earn her living finding few other options in nineteenth century Britain. But this lesser known of the Brontës’ novels led me to pity her charges too. The three governesses in the second novel are worlds away from Agnes Grey, not only because they’re in France. Although employed by the couple who own the sprawling estate, they’ve brought their charges with them, so aren’t subjected to the condescension of the mini monarchs of the house.

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Life, death and doctoring: Memoirs of a Woman Doctor & Night Theatre

22/3/2019

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Two short novels about doctoring, by authors with direct experience of the profession. The first, set in Egypt, is a semiautobiographical novel first published over half a century ago by one of the world’s most eminent feminists; the second, set in India, is a magic-realism story by a male author (but we won’t hold that against him). By sheer coincidence, neither of these authors names their characters, instead referring to them by role. (At least they don’t distinguish them by diagnoses!)

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Growing pains: The Choke & He Is Mine and I Have No Other

20/3/2019

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Two novels about girls in the painful process of growing up. For Australian Justine, in the first novel, adolescence merely exacerbates a lifetime of neglect; for Irish Lani, in the second, it’s the begins of psychological separation from her family as she falls for a local boy.

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Disaffected mothers: A Perfect Explanation & Adèle

11/3/2019

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Enid is a Scottish aristocrat who has married ‘down’; Adèle a working-class Parisian who married into the bourgeoisie. Enid considers sex a painful duty; Adèle is sex obsessed. For Enid, work is for men and servants; Adèle has a job. Born almost a century apart, the ‘heroines’ of these debuts nevertheless have similar motivations: both have been emotionally neglected by their own mothers and feel shackled by marriage and motherhood.

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War orphans, bickering spouses, loneliness and our struggles to connect: The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey

7/3/2019

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I couldn’t find a suitable partner for today’s review, but I wanted to get it out for publication day and it’s more than strong enough to stand alone. Another Irish writer to join this year’s favourites, although the novel is set in Cape Cod. It’s a beautifully written story of war orphans, bickering spouses, loneliness and our struggles to connect.

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Communists and post-communists: Zuleikha & Virtuoso

4/3/2019

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Two very different novels about women’s lives under and after the Soviet system: the first about a young mother from a Tatar village who finds a certain kind of freedom when she’s transported to the Soviet Gulag; the second about girls growing up in Prague in the dying days of communism.

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Sibling loyalties and multiple murders: My Sister The Serial Killer & The Night Tiger

17/2/2019

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While the title declares the first of these novels, set in Lagos, to be about siblings and killings, it’s not immediately obvious how it applies to the second, set in Perak, Malaysia. A boy who feels guided by his dead twin, a young woman strongly attached to her stepbrother, and mysterious deaths that might be the work of a tiger: does that nail it? Read on!

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The personal is political: Happening & Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

13/2/2019

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Two books using the author’s personal experience and celebrity (although I’d heard of neither) as an entryway for exploring and publicising important socio-political issues. The first is a memoir about abortion; the second is a hard-hitting analysis of race and class discrimination. Which balance of personal-sociological do you prefer?

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Three women, one man: The Geography of Friendship & The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives

1/2/2019

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I can recommend both of these novels about women whose lives are entangled with that of one man. In the first, three Australian friends are stalked by an unpleasant character when they embark on a long-distance walk. In the second, three Nigerian women have managed their common husband successfully, until he introduces a fourth wife into their home.

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My reading goals for 2019

30/1/2019

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In January last year, I posted on my goals to ensure that at least 50% of the books I read were from independent publishers and/or by female authors. Convinced that diversity is good for the brain, I aspired to make 20% of my reading choices translations. My analysis, posted earlier this month, showed I achieved on all three, but failed a fourth target of 25% BME authors. So what are the implications, if any, for my reading across the coming year?

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Novel perspectives on weapons and warfare: Red Birds & Trinity

28/1/2019

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Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif and American Louisa Hall both published their third novels last autumn, both approaching the theme of war and weaponry from an oblique angle. Both employ multiple narrators of stories originating in America, but with different settings and tone. The first is a contemporary satire of the American military misadventures in Islamic lands; the second a philosophical exploration of bombs and betrayal, patriotism and paranoia around the development, deployment and aftermath of the original weapon of mass destruction.

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Seven novels by female Australian authors

25/1/2019

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Last summer when I tweeted my post Why aren’t I reading more books by women?, someone commented that she didn’t read as many women as she’d like as her focus was Australian and New Zealand writers. While I must confess to a failure to review New Zealand writers of any gender, I’ve collected a few Australians in the last couple of years. What better prompt to give them another shout than Australia Day?

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Teenagers in exile: Shadows on the Tundra & The Key

23/1/2019

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Two books about teenage girls forced from their homes in what initially appear to be very different circumstances. In the first, a fourteen-year-old Lithuanian is transported to the Siberian tundra in 1940; in the second, a nineteen-year-old is compulsorily admitted to a psychiatric hospital in mid-1950s England. The first memoir, the second fiction, both books are about the struggle to survive in alien environments.

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Irish debuts looking back: A River in the Trees & When All Is Said

18/1/2019

8 Comments

Published this month are the debut novels of two promising Irish writers, both looking back to that country’s history, through the changes wrought by time on a family home. In the first it’s a humble farmhouse and overnight refuge for freedom fighters in the War of Independence, barely inhabitable when an exile considers buying it a hundred years later. In the second it’s the grand house of the local gentry when the narrator first crosses the threshold as a ten-year-old servant, and latterly the hotel where he reviews the eighty-plus decades of his life. And if you’re wondering about the coincidence of the blue covers, why not look back on this post?

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<<Previous

Mothers watching over their offspring from a distance: Zeina & She Would Be King

Fascism in the ascendant: The Fourth Shore & In the Full Light of the Sun

Writing isms: would you risk causing offence in your fiction? #amwriting

Domestic triangles: Disturbance & Stanley and Elsie

The Enigma of Gender

Kings behaving badly: Lux & Love in the Kingdom of Oil

Schooldays: Agnes Grey & The Governesses

Life, death and doctoring: Memoirs of a Woman Doctor & Night Theatre

Growing pains: The Choke & He Is Mine and I Have No Other

Disaffected mothers: A Perfect Explanation & Adèle

War orphans, bickering spouses, loneliness and our struggles to connect: The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey

Communists and post-communists: Zuleikha & Virtuoso

Sibling loyalties and multiple murders: My Sister The Serial Killer & The Night Tiger

The personal is political: Happening & Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

Three women, one man: The Geography of Friendship & The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives

My reading goals for 2019

Novel perspectives on weapons and warfare: Red Birds & Trinity

Seven novels by female Australian authors

Teenagers in exile: Shadows on the Tundra & The Key

Irish debuts looking back: A River in the Trees & When All Is Said

2019 Reading Challenge

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