On her last visit to my house before she died in February aged 95, my Nanny Iris casually threw into conversation how her father had taught her to read before she started school. Nan had asked how her great grandson Rufus was faring in Reception, and we were marvelling at that wonderous sorcery of early…
Category: Women
Lockdown and loneliness
Bastard Covid-19’s prohibition of our habitual touchy-feely ways – on a sliding scale from jovial shoulder slaps with a favourite Co-op assistant (we’re pretty tight with the Co-op crew round our way) to warm embraces for family and friends – has reduced our emotional world to include only that which exists between our four brick…
What exactly does one read during a pandemic?!
I had hoped to restore a bit of humour to Bronte’s Page Turners, given my recent focus on subjects as heartening as depression and immortality, but then BOOM: along comes a pandemic like Covid-19, and like most people I am navigating an ever-present readiness to sob and howl What. The. Actual. Fudge. Yesterday evening, as…
Poems as refuge: In The Pink by The Raving Beauties (1983)
‘Poetry has become divorced from our lives. We no longer feel part of the great oral and written tradition of myths and legends in which so many things were once protected and preserved. Nothing protects us, our minds, bodies and spirits are freely raped in the age of atomic suicide. The eternal truths of language…
Kurt Cobain: 25 years on
It’s hard to believe that it was twenty five years ago that I ran out of my parents’ bedroom crying melodramatically that ‘Kurt Cobain’s dead!!!’ after emergency tele-communications from a school friend on a Spring Sunday morning (oh for the days pre-internet/mobile phones, when such shattering news could be delivered so personally). At 13, my tribute…
Armistice 2018: Beyond the Glass by Antonia White (1954)
Set in the twenties and the last in the ‘Frost in May’ series, Antonia White’s semi-autobiographical account of a young woman’s descent into madness after an intense love affair with a soldier too swiftly follows a failed marriage includes the following haunting scene appropriate for this poignant Sunday. During High Mass, requiem is being sung…
Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
I began reading Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe with low expectations. Can a woman who voluntarily renames herself Fannie Flagg be trusted to write a great work of literature? Can a book which inspires a film starring Chris O’Donnell be anything other than pure schmaltz? I won’t fannie about (sorry). Yes, Fried…
Mothers and Shadows by Marta Traba (1981)
Mothers and Shadows centres on a group of women involved in the movement to quash civil-military dictatorships in Latin America’s Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile and Uruguay) during the 1970s/80s. Traba – who died in a plane crash alongside her husband and other prominent Latin America authors in 1983 – opens her tale with a meeting between…
Celebrating International Women’s Day 2018!
Following our posts to celebrate International Women’s Day in 2016 and 2017, we’re back again for #IWD2018 with a bounty of books to explore woman’s place in the world. Set in Rosenau, an isolated alpine farming community in Austria, Homestead by Rosina Lippi begins with a mysterious love letter – its intended recipient potentially being…
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles (1943)
To inspire us this New Year’s Day, the very surreal tale of two genteel women who go off the rails in spectacular fashion. New Year’s Eve carries high expectations. On those rare occasions when one does not struggle home on a crowded night bus thinking ‘why the hot damn did I not stay in with…
Books ‘N’ Babies!
Upon discovering I was pregnant this time last year, my ponder of the forthcoming journey dwelled on two things: 1) ‘Wow I’m up the duff and gonna be a muvver!’ Who signed that off?’ etc and 2) ‘Finally, some time to deal with Bertie aka my TBR book case, so monstrous it inspired a rap,…
Moll: The Life & Times of Moll Flanders by Sian Rees
In The Life & Times of Moll Flanders, Sian Rees retraces the story of one of fiction’s most infamous, intriguing and oft-misrepresented heroines to reveal how thin the line between fiction and reality can really be. It’s 20 years (eek) since I read Moll Flanders during the summer holiday between GCSEs and A-levels. It has…
Brontë's Page Turners 