Mrs. Dalloway is yet another feminist classic that I had to grow into. Wrapped up in Woolf’s instantly recognizable prose and the claustrophobia of post-WWI middle class life, the themes of repressed sexuality, mental illness and class division didn’t fully resonate with me until a second or third reading, and quite a few dinner parties ...
As a teenager I was so absorbed in the chemical make-up of Jane Eyre, I didn’t have much time for another Brontë. Nevermind a story of obsession on the moors, which at that time sounded to me like the script of a bad soap opera. Certainly not a thing which would ever afflict me. It ...
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 ...
So, we’re having this baby. It’s due in a few weeks and we’re trying to get organized with all...
I recently heard about what is claimed to be the rising phenomenon of Japanese men remaining virgins for longer...
Ladders. Patriarchal conspiracy. I’ll explain… This week I climbed a ladder. I was trying to reach a loft space,...
Dear Madame X, My boyfriend needs to look at porn while we have sex. It bothers me because I...
Mrs. Dalloway is yet another feminist classic that I had to grow into. Wrapped up in Woolf’s instantly recognizable...
Last week saw a Big Thing come to our soggy little island. Well, it was a Big Thing for...
Last weekend I was entertaining a guest, you know, the sort I was planning to have lots and lots...
All little girls want to be princesses… right?! It’s bad enough that toy aisles are separated out by what...
