Five Books On Women You’ll Never Forget, fun stuff edition
A bonus recommendation, a links roundup, music, a poem, and more
Welcome to this month’s Fun Stuff Edition of Five Books For, a newsletter for people who love great stories.
This month we’ve been talking about books which focus on women’s experiences, and today I have yet another great book to share with you. As always for the Fun Stuff Edition, we also have a poem, a playlist and some reading links, all in keeping with this month’s theme of women’s experiences. I hope you find something wonderful to read or listen to. Over at Global Comment, in this month’s Great Adaptations column I take a look at The Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells, and the film adaptation of it which features an all-star ensemble cast including Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, Ashley Judd and Dame Maggie Smith.
I’ve also had another couple of articles out this month, away from the newsletter. If you enjoyed last month’s newsletters on science fiction, you might also like this look at the history of sci-fi art, which so was fun to write - I learned so much from writing it, especially about contemporary art, an area I’m less familiar with.
I also wrote a piece recommending ten pieces of music for classical music sceptics. If you’ve ever felt like classical music is inaccessible, too intellectual or too boring, then I hope this article will change your mind.
I hope you’ll find something here to surprise and delight you. If you aren’t already subscribed, then you can sign up here to receive these newsletters directly in your inbox. The newsletter is free but if you would like to support it with a paid subscription that option is also available. If you don’t have the funds for a paid subscription at the moment but would like to leave a tip instead, the button below will allow you to send an amount of your choosing as a one-off payment.
Let’s dive in!
Bonus recommendation: My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
“I loved the math of it, three times my age, how easy it was to imagine three of me fitting inside him: one of me curled around his brain, another around his heart, the third turned to liquid and sliding through his veins.”
So what’s it about? At the age of fifteen Vanessa Wye is groomed and manipulated into a relationship with Jacob Strane, one of her teachers at boarding school. He convinces her that the relationship is consensual, although it destroys her life and leaves her, years later, struggling to function well, and still in contact with him. The story is told in dual timeline format, so that we see Vanessa both at age fifteen and in 2017, when other former students of Strane’s come forward to discuss his abuse. At first Vanessa is desperate to hold on to her conviction that their relationship was a loving one, and we travel along with her as she finally begins to face the truth about what happened all those years ago.
What’s great about it? What I loved the most about this book was how nuanced and emotionally intelligent it was. It explores questions of consent, agency and victimhood - who gets to decide if someone is a victim? Can consent ever be valid if there’s a large power imbalance in the relationship? How difficult is it to be honest with ourselves about the things that have happened to us, and how can we trust ourselves if the things we believe aren’t true? And, even more tricky: what if a victim isn’t interested in justice? What if they still love the person who has abused them? Vanessa spends a large part of the book refusing to believe that she’s a victim at all, and Russell masterfully shows how grooming and manipulation can distort memory and our perceptions of the truth, even for our own formative experiences.
Russell doesn’t try and give us any easy answers but instead allows Vanessa’s experience to stand alone as one example of the issues she’s looking at. There isn’t a neat, redemptive character arc with a happy ending either; rather, the book feels much more like real life in all its messy, unfinished reality. We see how Vanessa is able to believe that really she’s the one in control, even as it’s clear to us that she isn’t. The way her perspective on her own life shifts as the book progresses is extraordinarily well-written: I’ve rarely seen that kind of psychological and moral complexity done as well as it is here. Vanessa becomes a slightly unreliable narrator, not because she’s trying to deceive us but because she’s deceiving herself. The prose is precise and restrained, never overwrought, and it makes the book a pleasure to read despite the subject matter being so difficult.
Give it a try if: you love intelligent books that handle difficult subjects; you love books which have deep psychological insights; you’re comfortable with books that ask big questions without finding pat resolutions; you love books with protagonists who are imperfect and fully human.
Honourable mentions
I looked back over the archives and found quite a few books which also explore the experience of being a woman. Below are some extra recommendations for you to dip into if you feel like reading more on the theme, from a slightly different angle.
The Idea Of You by Robinne Lee is the story of a woman who falls in love with a much younger, world-famous pop star. It’s a story of epic, doomed love but it also asks important questions about aging, love and desire.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë explores one woman’s search for independence and dignity in a world where both of those things are hard to find. Surely one of the best books ever written.
The Dovekeepeers by Alice Hoffman follows four very different women through the siege of Masada, centuries ago.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar is the story of Angelica Neal, an 18th century courtesan, and her attempts to navigate a society which both condemns and celebrates women who dare to step outside their proscribed roles.
This month’s listens
For this month’s playlist I thought it would be interesting to share the music of some female composers who have often been ignored or overlooked. Both Clara Schumann and Amy Beach were accomplished composers of classical music, but neither achieved the kind of recognition their male counterparts found. Schumann was the mother to eight children as well as the wife of fellow composer Robert Schumann, whose career she championed, perhaps at the cost of her own. Amy Beach was one of the preeminent American female composers and also a concert pianist whose husband discouraged her from performing. I have added two albums with a selection of their works to the playlist so if you feel like listening to some beautiful music made by two incredible women, just click the link below.
This month’s poem
What Do Women Want?
By Kim Addonizio
I want a red dress. I want it flimsy and cheap, I want it too tight, I want to wear it until someone tears it off me. I want it sleeveless and backless, this dress, so no one has to guess what’s underneath. I want to walk down the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store with all those keys glittering in the window, past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. I want to walk like I’m the only woman on earth and I can have my pick. I want that red dress bad. I want it to confirm your worst fears about me, to show you how little I care about you or anything except what I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment from its hanger like I’m choosing a body to carry me into this world, through the birth-cries and the love-cries too, and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin, it’ll be the goddamned dress they bury me in.
This month’s reading links
What one man learned from reading the feminist classics. (The Guardian, free)
On the subversive potential of traditionally feminine arts and crafts. (Aeon, free)
A celebration of mid-life heroines. (Lithub, free)
On this month’s authors and books:
A critique of Three Women by Lisa Taddeo. (The New Yorker, paywall)
A first look at the TV adaptation of Three Women. (Vanity Fair, paywall)
An interview with Kirsten Miller, author of The Change. (The Gloss, free)
An interview with Elizabeth Wetmore, author of Valentine. (Dead Darlings, free)
An interview with Megan Hunter, author of The Harpy. (Bookanista, free)
Two interviews with Kate Elizabeth Russell, author of My Dark Vanessa. (The Guardian and Goodreads, both free)
Thanks for reading!
As always, I’m grateful to each and every one of you who subscribes, free or paid. I know we all have such crowded inboxes these days and I feel so lucky to be sharing the joys of reading with you like this. I would love to hear from you - what have you been reading recently? Have you read any of the books I’ve covered this month? Let me know in the comments. I’ll be back next month with a new theme and more reading joy.
Happy reading!
Kate
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I had totally forgotten about the Ya Ya sisterhood. Excellent book!