Category: Rants

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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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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Young idealists: Godsend & Deviation

25/2/2019

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Two novels about eighteen-year-old women who abandon the advantages of their previous identities to make common cause with oppressed peoples, at great risk to themselves. In the first, set in 2000, Aden travels from a secular society in California to study Islam, and to join the jihad. In the second, set in 1944, Luce leaves her bourgeois family in Italy to experience first-hand the Nazi labour camps. Are these rebellious adolescents idealists or deluded, or a little of both?

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Why #Metoo conversations are everybody’s business #amreading

20/11/2017

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My real-world promotion of World Toilet Day yesterday was somewhat eclipsed by a surprise conversation about #MeToo. Surprise because, having personally experienced only “mild” forms of unwanted sexual attention, I hadn’t jumped on this particular bandwagon, the conversation left me feeling I should have. After all, one doesn’t have to have experienced direct gender discrimination to be a feminist. One shouldn’t have to have experienced the trauma of rape to oppose the culture of misogyny that so often enables it.

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Cry, Baby, Cry!

16/1/2017

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Sue Gerhardt's book nails the argument much more clearly than I can.

Knowing I’ve never had children, readers have expressed surprise that I’m interested in reading and writing about mothers and babies. To me, however, it makes sense politically, (past) professionally and personally. A socialist by inclination, I believe in collective responsibility for the vulnerable, and who could be more vulnerable than a neonate? In psychology, although there are different and opposing models of the impact of early months and years, curiosity about the human mind necessitates at least a passing interest in our origins. Finally, I’m very much in touch with how it feels to be totally dependent on someone who doesn’t heed my cries. So, yes, I give a crap about attentiveness to babies, and not just when they’ve soiled their nappies.

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It’s not humbug, I just don’t like Christmas

17/12/2016

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If you trade in trees and turkeys, I wish you a prosperous one. If you’re a Christian, I wish you a divine one. If you can’t get enough bling, I wish you a glittery one. If you like old movies, I wish you a nostalgic one. If you’re an extrovert, I wish you a carousing one. If you’re happy to devote hundreds of hours to food creation and consumption, I wish you a gastronomic one. If you’re skilled at shopping, at giving and/or receiving presents, I wish you a gratifying one. If you have children, or an uncomplicated relationship with your roots, I wish you a familial one (and if you don’t, you might appreciate this flash from Sarah Brentyn). If you appreciate being nudged to consider others less fortunate, I wish you a charitable one. If you’re getting to know a new partner, I wish you a romantic one. If you’re in need of a break from a hectic job, I wish you a tranquil one.

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Humbled, Theresa? Puhleeeassse!

12/7/2016

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How quickly time moves on in politics if I can go, in under three weeks, from hoping that someone will speak out for diversity and social justice to relief we’ve someone who doesn’t come across like an embarrassing uncle (or, in my case, nephew) to negotiate us out of the EU. When the country appears on the brink of Trumpification, I’m grateful for crumbs of sanity wherever they arise. So thank you, Theresa May, for enabling the speedy departure of the chump who gambled his own and his country’s future on a game of dice with his backbenchers, although I feel for the Campbell children having to move house with so little time to pack their toys. As for Andrea Leasdom’s own goal against childless women (of which I’ll have more to say at a later date), all she’s done is demonstrate she’s in politics, not for our collective futures, but for the sake of the genes that will live on in her offspring after her death.

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Homeless inside

27/6/2016

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The Carrot Ranch is on the move and, sadly, not by choice. Forced out of her home and on the road, Charli has nevertheless grabbed the reins for long enough to deliver another flash fiction challenge. Fittingly, the topic is home and she’s served up two brilliant examples from her own novels in progress. While a collection of 99-word stories might not provide the much-needed bricks and mortar, there’s a virtual round-the-campfire homeliness on her blog when writers ride up with our responses to the prompt.

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The Wacky Man by Lyn G Farrell & a rant about punishment

5/5/2016

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Fifteen-year-old Amanda is in a bad way. Unwilling or unable to leave her bedroom, unwashed and unloved, she sits on the grubby floor, pulling out the hairs from her head one by one. She has no need for relationships, no use for her mother except that she leave her meals and cigarettes outside the door. Curtains drawn, with little sense of time, her head is full of thoughts of how intolerable the world is as she relates the story of her own unhappy life.

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11 reasons I might give up on a novel #amreading

28/3/2016

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As I’ve mentioned before, I was surprised when a literary agent who turned down my debut novel did so because the sample I’d sent her was written in the first person present tense. But if you read for a living, being familiar with your preferences and prejudices can save a lot of time. After all, we can’t all appreciate the same thing. Reading for reviews is helping me clarify my own likes and dislikes although, despite the title of this post, a sense of accountability to publishers who’ve provided me a free copy and a belief in the value of diversity will see me rarely abandoning a book. (I think I ditched three out of well over 100 books I read last year.) But since “11 reasons I don’t want to read your book” has a nasty ring to it, for the purposes of this post I’m extending the definition of “abandon” to encompass books I’m not even tempted to start. Practical or blinkered, considered or arbitrary, undoubtedly contradictory, in reverse order of annoyingness, these are my 11 reasons I won’t give a novel my time.