Reviewed by Zoë Fairbairns
The Guilty Feminist, which is part-autobiography, part-interview collection, part-manifesto and part-book-of-the-podcast, is generally engaging in its cards-on-the-table clarity. The author’s recommendations for action are inspired by the reminder that ‘my life now is the direct consequence of the hopes of the long-dead women before me. We live their hopes every time we walk down the street unchaperoned, uncorseted, uncensored...we live the hopes of the suffragettes and the demands of Maya Angelou’ [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by N. J. Cooper
Grip is a lonely man, struggling to deal with the recent death of his lover, Ben, and the nightmare of life in the Horn of Africa. His tactics are not always strictly legal, and he suffers for that, but they are clever and he gets most of the results he needs. Exciting and horrifying, this novel shows, above all, how the legal and illegal worlds intersect and why anyone with any kind of power is forced into almost unbearable compromises [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by N.J. Cooper
Lex is a new mother just returning to work, full of the familiar difficulties of leaking breasts, guilt, and anxiety. She loves her daughter but hates being a mother. Unlike most such women, she is a specialist in the neat and violent extermination of her country’s enemies. Her husband has no idea, believing she works in some dreary data-processing part of the government, and her closest colleague and sometime lover thinks he’s a prat [Read more...] in Reviews
It is with great regret that we learned recently of the death of writer and bookoxygen reviewer Jessica Mann. Jessica lived a life in literature, writing more than twenty crime novels, plus insightful books of non-fiction, reviews and more. She specialized in non-fiction for this website and her pithy, empathetic and women-centred work can be found by entering her name in the search engine. We will miss her greatly.
Reviewed by Alison Burns
Her mother had always behaved wilfully, then sought forgiveness with disarming songs and smiles. Her husband had turned out to be rigid and unimaginative, quite unlike Willa’s kindly father. By the time she acquires a second husband, Peter, her optimism has quite gone: ‘Marriage was often a matter of dexterity, in Willa’s experience’ [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by Shirley Whiteside
The story is narrated by Lizzie Peacock and Kalala, one of the Pacific Islanders. Lizzie, a strong character, believes her father’s every word, never imagining that he might make a mistake. And indeed, Mr Peacock is a clever man but also selfish and self-absorbed. Convinced he is destined for better things, he is happy to leave his Samoan business behind no matter what privations his family might suffer on the island [Read more...] in Reviews
