annethology
  • Home
    • About Annethology
    • About me >
      • A little more about me
    • About my books
    • Author talks
    • Contact me
    • Forthcoming events
    • World Mental Health Day
    • Privacy
    • Sign up for my newsletter
  • Debut novel and encore
    • Sugar and Snails >
      • Acknowledgements
      • Blog tour, Q&A's and feature articles >
        • Birthday blog tour
        • S&S on tour 2022
      • Early endorsements
      • Events >
        • Launch photos
        • Launch party videos
      • in pictures
      • Media
      • If you've read the book
      • Polari
      • Reading group questions
      • Reviews
      • In the media
    • Underneath >
      • Endorsements and reviews
      • Launch party and events
      • Pictures
      • Questions for book groups
      • The stories underneath the novel
  • Matilda Windsor series
    • The accidental series
    • Matilda Windsor >
      • What readers say
      • For book groups
      • Interviews, articles and features
      • Matty on the move
      • Who were you in 1990?
      • Asylum lit
      • Matilda Windsor media
    • Stolen Summers >
      • Stolen Summers reviews
    • Lyrics for the Loved Ones
  • Short stories
    • Somebody’s Daughter
    • Becoming Someone (anthology) >
      • Becoming Someone (video readings)
      • Becoming Someone reviews
      • Becoming Someone online book chat
    • Print and downloads
    • Read it online
    • Quick reads
  • Free ebook
  • Annecdotal
    • Annecdotal blog
    • Annecdotal Press
    • Articles >
      • Print journalism
      • Where psychology meets fiction
    • Fictional therapists
    • Reading and reviews >
      • Reviews A to H
      • Reviews I to M
      • Reviews N to Z
      • Nonfiction
      • Themed quotes
      • Reading around the world
  • Shop
    • Inspired Quill (my publisher)
    • Bookshop.org (affiliate link)
    • Amazon UK
    • Amazon US
    • books2read

Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

Drastic solutions to infertility: The Testaments & One Part Woman

17/12/2019

4 Comments

 
What happens when childlessness develops from being a personal matter to a problem for society as a whole? In Margaret Atwood’s imagined Gilead an alarming drop in the live birth rate calls for Draconian measures, building a society where a woman’s mind and body are subservient to her reproductive potential. In Perumal Murugan’s rural South India, childlessness is a threat to the established order, with friends and neighbours pitching in with advice and criticism, indifferent to the infertile couple’s private grief.

Picture
Picture


The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

Is there any point reviewing this recently-released sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale? I expect it’s already on your radar and my opinion won’t make a jot of difference as to whether or not you read it. And if somehow you’ve missed the hype, you’re probably not the intended audience. Having bought my own copy for a book group meeting (although I’d have eventually got round to reading it regardless), I have no moral obligation to a publisher. But I’m addicted to reviewing – although this isn’t quite a review.
 
As you probably know, it’s a novel about the rise and fall of a misogynist theocracy, told from three points of view. In Aunt Lydia, one of the founders who dictates and manages the systematic abuse of girls and women, Margaret Atwood has created a marvellously engaging villain. And humanised her: she’s done what she felt she had to do to survive. Expect lively discussions about whether, in those dreadful circumstances, we’d behave likewise; I don’t think I could, but I managed to shock my book group when, discussing Dark Water by Elizabeth Lowry, I said I’d willingly eat any of my friends to stay alive. And I’m a vegetarian.
 
The other two voices are of girls growing up on either side of the North American border. Daisy is a typical Canadian teenager, albeit a little overprotected by her parents – and she’s soon to discover why. Growing up in Gilead, Agnes is also protected by her mother, although her father, Commander Kyle, barely notices her. Life gets tougher when her mother dies and she is prepared for marriage to a powerful man her father’s age whose other young wives have all died mysteriously.
 
The setup is magnificent, with touches of humour, especially from the outwardly dour Aunt Lydia, and poignancy in the schoolgirls’ ignorance beyond flower arranging and embroidery. I felt Agnes becomes disillusioned too quickly – although she does hang on to her religion, and she is facing legalised rape. Although I enjoyed the resolution, I kept waiting for things to turn even more awful than they were. Most of the tension was in the first half rather than at the end.
 
A bonus for me was another fictional toilet to add to my collection, bringing the total to 19. In the dawning days of Gilead, when female intellectuals of any stripe are rounded up and held in a stadium, Aunt Lydia quickly cottons on to how inadequate facilities can be weaponised to degrade (p142):
 
lineups for the foul toilets, and good luck to you if yours was clogged, since no one would come to unclog it. My theory? The guards went around at night stuffing various materials down the toilets as a further aggravation …
 
Did I say there was no toilet paper? What then? Use your hand, attempt to clean your sullied fingers under the dribble of water that sometimes came out of the taps and sometimes did not. I’m sure they arranged that on purpose also, to raise us up and hurl us down at random intervals. I could picture the glee on the face of whatever kitten-torturing cretin was assigned to this task as he flipped the power switch on the water flow system back and forth.
 
We had been told not to drink the water from those taps, but some unwisely did. Retching and diarrhoea followed, to contribute to the general joy.
 
While I enjoyed The Testaments, I don’t think it merits it taking half the Booker prize from Bernadine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other. Especially when Margaret Atwood has one all to herself already! But, with a wealth of quality works behind her, she’s certainly due the Nobel Prize.
 
It’s impossible to read The Testaments without the excellent TV series sitting on one’s shoulder, which might have rendered some of the novel’s scenes less shocking. My reading was also overshadowed by my WIP, Snowflake, about a teenager with a noise phobia, set in a dystopian near future where empathy has disappeared. Although undoubtedly influenced by The Handmaid’s Tale, ditto every other dystopian novel I’ve read, I was interested to find some commonalities with The Testaments which I hadn’t anticipated, but also differences.
 
In my novel, as in many contemporary Western societies, the genders are officially equal, but powerful men still manage to access women’s bodies without their consent. Told from the point of view of the weakling son of powerful parents, the brutality, masquerading as building strength, begins in the nursery. Will Nelson learn to distinguish truth from falsehood in time to save himself?


One Part Woman by Perumal Murugan translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan

Kali and Ponna make a loving couple but, without a child, their marriage is considered a failure. Over the years they flip between hope and resignation, battling to make sense of their own feelings while fending off the jibes of family and neighbours in rural Tamil Nadu. While in this patriarchal culture Ponna, the wife, bears the brunt of societal disapproval, Kali is also mocked.
 
They consider and reject adoption, make pilgrimages and give offerings, consider and reject Kali taking a second wife. Sometimes they feel desperate; at other times their love seems enough. But without respect for their predicament, they’re isolated, unable to play a part in their communities, as if they’re not fully adult.
 
There’s one remedy they haven’t yet considered, because neither wants to sacrifice their relationship for a child. But as the festival for the half-male, half-female god Maadhorubaagan approaches the pressure increases: for one night only taboos are lifted and consensual sex between unmarried men and women is allowed.
 
I was drawn to the theme of this novel: many of those I met in rural India in my mid-twenties were concerned I had neither husband or children, or assumed I was still in my teens. But, although a bestseller in India since its publication in Tamil in 2010, I found myself waiting in vain for the story to take off. Nevertheless, I appreciated the rare opportunity to read a translation from Tamil and one endorsed by the author of Ghachar Ghochar, one of my favourite reads from two years ago. Thanks to Pushkin Press for my review copy.
 
For another novel about societal pressures exacerbated the pain of infertility, this one set in Nigeria, see Stay With Me by Ayòbámi Adébáyò. My own novel, Underneath, although not about infertility per se, explores a relationship breakdown stemming from different perceptions of the importance of having a child.
Picture
Picture
I was in shock when the latest flash fiction challenged pinged into my inbox. Here in the UK, the ‘people’ have elected their pig in a poke . While there’s a nod to One Part Woman in my 99-word story it’s more about my grief, fear and sense of helplessness as we approach The Testaments territory, building our own version of hell on earth. At least my WIP, Snowflake, will remain topical.
Gone fishin’

He was hard on the outside, hollow within. Lacquered against the elements, he squatted, with his fishing rod, beside the pond.

People threw in coins, made a wish: for a lottery win, a baby, a cruise. Fixed smile above his beard, his belted tunic, above his boots, he looked the part they needed him to play.

They’d got him wrong. He could’ve told them how to cure the climate crisis, to hold back the tides of fascism, to create a more equal world.

Their hearts were hard, their skulls were hollow. Why would they listen to a garden gnome?
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
4 Comments
D.Avery link
18/12/2019 02:52:15 am

I think I see what you did here... something is hollow for sure and people ask for the wrong things. Listen to the wrong refrains. Congratulations on a fine 99 word response to a prompt that is right down there with unicorns.
I couldn't do it this week. Too weak with a cold but thank goodness it is not pgnome-ownia. I also appreciate the reminder to read the Lowry book; that slipped by and it still sounds good. So.
Sorry about the rest of it.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
18/12/2019 03:21:20 pm

Thanks, D, and sorry about your cold – it must be bad to keep you from finding your own flash fiction, even in response to such an offbeat prompt. Take care, and don’t forget we’ll be following in your country’s footsteps on the road to ruin, so make it colourful! Of course, it already is.

Reply
Charli Mills
19/12/2019 01:17:50 am

Strange how in dystopian societies we see the power scales tip even more against women when women are needed. Murugan show how even a well-intentioned, accepting, and loving couple can get caught up in the tides of societal fears and control. That's what is unnerving about the pendulum swinging so far. Important books to read.

I like how you compare your stories or books to the review topics at hand. This helps readers find an entry point. I understand how you must be feeling. The shock and dismay. It is seen in the parallelism of your opening and ending. What is hard, what is hollow, and no resolution. Hopefully, saner times will come.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
19/12/2019 05:44:03 pm

Well, women might be needed but how can men take control unless they police the production of new human beings?
While I hope for sane times – obviously – I really feel it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. The populist leaders like Trump and Boris Johnson seem to have so little respect for constitutional law and persuade their followers they don’t have to abide by the laws that impede their personal ambitions.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
    Picture
    Available now
    Picture
    The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home
    Picture
    Find a review
    Picture
    Fictional therapists
    Picture
    Picture
    About Anne Goodwin
    Picture
    My published books
    entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
    Picture
    My third novel, published May 2021
    Picture
    My debut novel shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize
    Picture
    Picture
    My second novel published May 2017.
    Picture
    Short stories on the theme of identity published 2018
    Anne Goodwin's books on Goodreads
    Sugar and Snails Sugar and Snails
    reviews: 32
    ratings: 52 (avg rating 4.21)

    Underneath Underneath
    reviews: 24
    ratings: 60 (avg rating 3.17)

    Becoming Someone Becoming Someone
    reviews: 8
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.56)

    GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4 GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4
    reviews: 4
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.44)

    The Best of Fiction on the Web The Best of Fiction on the Web
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 3 (avg rating 4.67)

    2022 Reading Challenge

    2022 Reading Challenge
    Anne has read 2 books toward their goal of 100 books.
    hide
    2 of 100 (2%)
    view books
    Picture
    Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.  
    Picture
    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
    reader, writer,

    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
    recovering psychologist, 
    struggling soprano, 
    author of three fiction books.

    LATEST POSTS HERE
    I don't post to a schedule, but average  around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), 
    some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books.  

    Your comments are welcome any time any where.

    Get new posts direct to your inbox ...

    Enter your email address:

    or click here …

    RSS Feed


    Picture

    Tweets by @Annecdotist
    Picture
    New short story, “My Dirty Weekend”
    Picture
    Let’s keep in touch – subscribe to my newsletter
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Popular posts

    • Compassion: something we all need
    • Do spoilers spoil?
    • How to create a convincing fictional therapist
    • Instructions for a novel
    • Looking at difference, embracing diversity
    • Never let me go: the dilemma of lending books
    • On loving, hating and writers’ block
      On Pop, Pirates and Plagiarism
    • READIN' for HER reviews
    • Relishing the cuts
    • The fast first draft
    • The tragedy of obedience
    • Writers and therapy: a love-hate relationship?

    Categories/Tags

    All
    Animals
    Annecdotist Hosts
    Annecdotist On Tour
    Articles
    Attachment Theory
    Author Interviews
    Becoming Someone
    Being A Writer
    Blogging
    Bodies
    Body
    Bookbirthday
    Books For Writers
    Bookshops
    CB Book Group
    Character
    Childhood
    Christmas
    Classics
    Climate Crisis
    Coming Of Age
    Counsellors Cafe
    Creative Writing Industry
    Creativity
    Cumbria
    Debut Novels
    Disability
    Editing
    Emotion
    Ethics
    Ethis
    Family
    Feedback And Critiques
    Fictional Psychologists & Therapists
    Food
    Friendship
    Futuristic
    Gender
    Genre
    Getting Published
    Giveaways
    Good Enough
    Grammar
    Gratitude
    Group/organisational Dynamics
    Hero’s Journey
    History
    Humour
    Identity
    Illness
    Independent Presses
    Institutions
    International Commemorative Day
    Jane Eyre
    Kidney Disease
    Language
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Live Events
    Lyrics For The Loved Ones
    Marketing
    Matilda Windsor
    Memoir
    Memory
    Mental Health
    Microfiction
    Motivation
    Music
    MW Prequel
    Names
    Narrative Voice
    Nature / Gardening
    Networking
    Newcastle
    Nonfiction
    Nottingham
    Novels
    Pandemic
    Peak District
    Perfect Match
    Poetry
    Point Of View
    Politics
    Politics Current Affairs
    Presentation
    Privacy
    Prizes
    Psychoanalytic Theory
    Psychology
    Psycholoists Write
    Psychotherapy
    Race
    Racism
    Rants
    Reading
    Real Vs Imaginary
    Religion
    Repetitive Strain Injury
    Research
    Reviewing
    Romance
    Satire
    Second Novels
    Settings
    Sex
    Shakespeare
    Short Stories General
    Short Stories My Published
    Short Stories Others'
    Siblings
    Snowflake
    Somebody's Daughter
    Stolen Summers
    Storytelling
    Structure
    Sugar And Snails
    Technology
    The
    The Guestlist
    Therapy
    TikTok
    TNTB
    Toiletday
    Tourism
    Toxic Positivity
    Transfiction
    Translation
    Trauma
    Unconscious
    Unconscious, The
    Underneath
    Voice Recognition Software
    War
    WaSBihC
    Weather
    Work
    Writing Process
    Writing Technique

    Archives

    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Picture
    BLOGGING COMMUNITIES
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from havens.michael34, romana klee, mrsdkrebs, Kyle Taylor, Dream It. Do It., adam & lucy, dluders, Joybot, Hammer51012, jorgempf, Sherif Salama, eyspahn, raniel diaz, E. E. Piphanies, scaredofbabies, Nomadic Lass, paulternate, Tony Fischer Photography, archer10 (Dennis), slightly everything, impbox, jonwick04, country_boy_shane, dok1, Out.of.Focus, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Midwest Region, Elvert Barnes, guillenperez, Richard Perry, jamesnaruke, Juan Carlos Arniz Sanz, El Tuerto, kona99, maveric2003, !anaughty!, Patrick Denker, David Davies, hamilcar_south, idleformat, Dave Goodman, Sharon Mollerus, photosteve101, La Citta Vita, A Girl With Tea, striatic, carlosfpardo, Damork, Elvert Barnes, UNE Photos, jurvetson, quinn.anya, BChristensen93, Joelk75, ashesmonroe, albertogp123, >littleyiye<, mudgalbharat, Swami Stream, Dicemanic, lovelihood, anyjazz65, Tjeerd, albastrica mititica, jimmiehomeschoolmom