Tag: feminist writing

A Different Kind of Power – book review

A Different Kind of Power, by Jacinda Ardern

I didn’t know political biographies could be like this. There’s not a nasty bone in its body. I haven’t read a book so uplifting for a long time but I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, Jacinda Ardern’s signature is kindness. No one was expecting she’d take the opportunity now she has left office and living overseas to get stuck into the dozens of goons she must have had to deal with on a daily basis.

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Three Woman and a Boat–book review

Three Women and a Boat, by Anne Youngson

Inspired, of course, by Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, but updated and given a gender twist, Three Women and a Boat is a feminist book. All three of the women characters (four, including a young friend) are out in the world without being beholden to, or reliant on men.  They’re complete. There are men around, but the story is not about their relationships, but the women themselves. And there’s a dog like the one in Jerome’s version, who sparks some of the action, as dogs tend to do.

Anastasia has lived most of her life on a canal barge. But she’s ill, needs to take a break for treatments and is looking for someone to take her boat, The Number One, north to the yards in Uxbridge to get overhauled.

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Girl, Woman, Other – book review

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

This is not so much a novel as a commitment. There are a lot of lives here and they all ask you to take the time to read, to listen, to understand. Don’t skimp on this book. Don’t try to squeeze it in with quick gulps when your mind is elsewhere.

I found the level of intimacy from strangers a bit overwhelming to begin with. These are straight talking and honest women sharing their experiences from a cross-section of black Britain. They take you right into the living room and sit you down. There are twelve main characters who tell their stories in separate chapters, up and down the generations and all loosely linked. The bunch is tied together at the end in a party.

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