Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved arrived in my hands via a public library, when I was a broke teenager with vague ideas about what it meant to be a feminist at the turn of the century. The central character, Sethe, is an African-American woman living in the United States in the late 19th century. An escaped ...
When A Clockwork Orange was published in 1962, the term sexualized violence wasn’t in use. The distinction between sexualized violence and erotic sex was, in law and in everyday discourse, blurred. This is why Anthony Burgess’ novel led us into a dark, yet honest place. Though the elaborate and often unreadable cruelty in the novel ...
There’s not much that hasn’t been said about Alexander Trocchi’s treatment of women, real and literary. I read Young Adam through gritted teeth as a much younger woman, and again when it became a film in 2003. The film was, in my opinion, better than the novel in the sense that it effectively contrasted human ...
After the publication of his fourth and most successful novel The Slap, which was turned into a TV miniseries in Australia and kicked off the 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival, Christos Tsiolkas complained of the poverty of criticism of the sex in his book. I agreed. The novel itself is written in eight parts, telling ...
This week, for a change of pace, I’m looking at non-fiction online. Bookslut is an established and well-publicised e-zine dedicating much of its space to literary reviews, columns and features. The layout is impressive and the early work of the publication was groundbreaking, focusing on literature from both a feminist and grassroots perspective. The submissions ...
John Burnside’s novel A Summer of Drowning takes us into the mind of Liv, a woman remembering the strange, possibly supernatural events of a summer ten years before. I was surprised to be so rapidly drawn into A Summer of Drowning, as I’ve never really warmed to Burnside’s poetry. The teenage Liv is a compelling ...
Achmat Dangor’s novel Bitter Fruit begins in post-apartheid South Africa, when Silas spots the police lieutenant who raped Lydia nearly twenty years before. The novel follows the lives of the former activists, now married and seemingly settled into middle class life with a teenage son and a close circle of friends. The central themes are ...
I re-read Carol Shields when I want to find new layers to a familiar story. The Republic of Love lacks the gravitas of Shields’ more acclaimed novels, but it reinvents a basic love story with subtlety and wit. Familiarity underpins the lives of the interlinked characters, including the city, Winnipeg, which functions as both a ...
Anne Fine’s Fly in the Ointment takes me quickly through the life of Lois, whose son is dead after a lengthy stint of heroin use and whose husband has left her without saying goodbye. Indifferent to the dull, unpleasant husband and grieving for her son, Lois interrupts her second life of solitude and simple pleasures ...
If you’re interested in feminist discussions of pornography, there are a number of must-read texts you should check out and Pamela Paul’s Pornified is one of them. Published in 2005, Paul’s analysis of a society so accustomed to everyday images of softcore pornography and increasingly desensitized to more hardcore offerings, is every bit as relevant ...
The latest film in the American Pie series, American Reunion, contains a shocking scene – male full-frontal nudity including...
Dear Madame X, I have just started seeing this girl. She seems great, but she recently told me she...
Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved arrived in my hands via a public library, when I was a broke teenager with...
My attention was drawn this week to an article about the reaction at a Canadian university to proposals to...
Airport security. Bloody nuisance. Also a conspiracy designed to subjugate women. Allow me to elaborate. Despite flying quite a...
The Cannes film festival has kicked off this week with controversy over the lack of films made by women...
Dear Madame X, I seem to be only attracted to men who are macho assholes. I like them at...
When A Clockwork Orange was published in 1962, the term sexualized violence wasn’t in use. The distinction between sexualized...
