Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power by Ijeoma Oluo

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power by Ijeoma Oluo. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.

Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo is a deep dive into the damage caused by the drive to uphold the power of white men. No matter how qualified or unqualified those individual white men may be. 

Charting the history of America—by way of Buffalo Bill, the civil rights movement, Joe Biden’s flip flopping record on school desegregation busing, racism within the NFL, and the backlash against the increasing number of women in politics on both the right and the left (Bernie bros, rightfully, do not get a pass here!)—Ijeoma Oluo examines the destructive impact white male supremacy has on Black people, people of colour and women. 

This is how patriarchy and white supremacy were designed to work. And since they are both built into the fabric of daily life, they are inescapable. This is particularly true for people who live at the intersection of race and gender. Completely dismantling these systems of oppression is necessary because incremental changes have not been enough. 

Oluo’s analysis is clear-thinking. Her writing is sharp, focused, and accessible despite the academic nature of some of the research involved. 

I started reading Mediocre at the end of December and finished it the week of the US Capitol insurrection, which was an all too real manifestation of everything Oluo discusses. This added to the intensity of the book, but emphasised how vital a read Mediocre is. 

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power by Ijeoma Oluo is published by Seal Press, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group, and is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook format. 

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here

Born prematurely to Korean parents, who had emigrated to America, Nicole Chung was adopted by a white couple. Growing up in a small town in Oregon in the 1980s, Chung faced discrimination and racism that everyone around her, including her adoptive family, struggled to see or fully understand. 

From the beginning, Chung's adoption story was framed by her religious parents as being destined by God and that her birth parents made the ultimate sacrifice in order for Nicole to have a better life. As she grew up, Chung began finding this version of events less comforting and more confusing. 

It felt like only half of the story and Chung wanted the whole story. 

It is while pregnant with her first child that Chung makes contact with her birth family. She needs more details about her premature birth than her adoptive parents can provide. 

As suspected, the reasons for her adoption were more complicated than her parents portrayed. More complicated than they, themselves, understood. 

Chung gives voice to her complex and, often, messy and conflicting emotions about being a transracial adoptee. She writes about these complexities in a way that is sensitive to the experiences of her adoptive parents and her birth parents and siblings.

All You Can Ever Know is a moving and thought-provoking memoir about transracial adoption, race, identity, motherhood, and family in all its forms. 

All You Can Ever Know is published by ONE, an imprint of Pushkin Press, and is available in hardback. paperback, ebook, and audiobook format.

Girlhood by Melissa Febos

Girlhood by Melissa Febos. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.

I finished reading Girlhood by Melissa Febos and immediately wanted to discuss it at a feminist book club. I am not a member of a feminist book club — maybe this will finally spur me on to start one! — so this review will have to do. 

Honestly, though, this is a book better suited to discussion than a written review 

Blending memoir with reportage, academic research, and cultural criticism, the essays in this collection examine the many ways girls realise that their bodies are not their own. And explores the impact these experiences have on the women those girls become. 

Febos writes about her early adolescent sexual experiences and the reputation she garnered as a result, her time as a dominatrix, being a heroin addict and getting sober, her relationship with her mother, and the man who stood outside her bedroom window and catcalled her from the street. 

This is a book about girlhood, but it is also a book about queer girlhood. 

While the girl who told Febos when they were both nine years old, "Your ring finger is longer than your pointer finger. That means you are a lesbian." was, obviously, repeating one of the many myths about lesbians that young girls often share; Febos is queer. 

Queerness permeates the text, in the best possible way, from her first girlfriend to the decentring of men in her personal life and her relationship with her current partner, Donika. It is part of the narrative because queerness is part of Febos' life, but this isn't a coming out story. Her queerness just is. Which is refreshing, still. It shouldn't be, it's 2021 after all, but it is. 

Girlhood is confronting, dark, twisty, and visceral. It is also considered and full of nuance. 

The standout essays for me are Intrusions, Wild America, Thesmophoria, and Thank You for Taking Care of Yourself. 

Girlhood by Melissa Febos is published by Bloomsbury and is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook format.

Real Estate by Deborah Levy

Real Estate by Deborah Levy. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.

Real Estate is the third and final installment in Deborah Levy's 'Living Autobiography' series. 

There is something comforting about reading Levy's meditation on real estate, owning a house, and the concept of home during lockdown. Real Estate was written before the pandemic but, after a year where we have largely been confined to within 5km of our homes, I suspect its themes will connect with more people than it might ordinarily have. 

As she approaches her sixtieth birthday and her youngest daughter gets ready to leave their flat to attend university, Levy is preoccupied with what her legacy will be. What will she leave behind? Her children and the books she has written, yes. But there won't be a house. 

A fellowship in Paris provides the perfect escape from her flat in London and the two sheds she is renting, so that she has a place of her own to write. She knows that her ideal house will remain a pipe dream, but she can still dream — right? 

I don't want to say too much about the narrative. So much of the joy is in watching the story unfold. Levy weaves her thoughts on creativity, motherhood, aging, relationships, legacy, and home into a refreshing memoir that is a call to build the life you want.

It can be read as a standalone book but, if you haven't already, I recommend reading Things I Don't Want You Know and The Cost of Living first. If only because you'll get to spend more time in Deborah Levy's world which is time well spent. 

Real Estate by Deborah Levy is published on May 13th by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Random House. It is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook format.

Bring Me to Light: Embracing My Bipolar and Social Anxiety by Eleanor Segall

Bring Me to Light: Embracing My Bipolar and Social Anxiety by Eleanor Segall. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.

Bipolar disorder runs in Eleanor Segall's family, so while her diagnosis wasn't wholly unsurprising — especially when her periods of depression gave way to episodes of mania and psychosis — that doesn't mean it was an easy diagnosis to accept or adjust to. 

Taking us back to when she first became ill at 15, Segall shares her experiences of depression, mania, psychosis, social anxiety, and agoraphobia. She writes candidly about the time she spent in hospital, both involuntarily and voluntarily. We learn about the impact bipolar disorder and social anxiety has had on her education and work life. How her life didn't follow the plan she thought it would. 

There is also a really interesting and important discussion about religion and mental health. Segall is Jewish and writes wonderfully about this part of her identity and her volunteer work with Jami, a mental health service for the Jewish community. 

Calling people courageous for writing about their mental health can seem trite these days, but it is brave of Segall to share her experiences of hypersexuality during manic episodes and what consent actually means in these circumstances. 

This is an aspect of an already complex mental illness that is not talked about enough. I can understand why. It's often not an experience people want to revisit after the fact. Or it's a period of time that they have little to no memory of. Or they've fallen into a shame spiral and talking to people about it is the last thing they want to do. 

I've been thinking about this a lot recently because it's one of the symptoms of bipolar disorder that people are familiar with, but that does not mean we understand it fully. Or know how to react when people we know are in this situation. 

At its core Bring Me to Light by Eleanor Segall is about learning to live alongside your mental illness. Recovery is possible, but it takes work. Recovery also isn't linear and periods of relapse can and do happen. All of which is OK. It can be complicated and messy, but relapse does not mean you have failed. 

If you live with bipolar disorder, much of Bring Me to Light will resonate even if your experience doesn't exactly match Segall's. I would also recommend it to people who don't have a mental health condition, but who want to learn more about mental illness.

Bring Me to Light: Embracing My Bipolar and Social Anxiety by Eleanor Segall is published by Trigger Publishing and is available in paperback and ebook format.

Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad

Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.

Taking its name from a line in Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor, “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.”, Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad is a memoir about living with cancer and the process of rebuilding your life once treatment is complete. 

The uncontrollable itch and never-ending fatigue that started when Jaouad was in college led to a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia at the age of 22. 

A diagnosis which meant Jaouad had to leave Paris and move back in with her parents in Saratoga Springs, New York. 

The next few years were spent in treatment; chemotherapy, a clinical trial, and ultimately a stem cell transplant. When Jaouad began blogging about her life it garnered more attention than she expected and became a column in the New York Times entitled Life, Interrupted. 

Jaouad writes beautifully about the impact cancer had on the people around her, particularly her parents, her brother, and her partner. She strikes the right balance between understanding that although this is her story to tell, the people involved also deserve their privacy. This is especially well handled when her relationship ends and when she talks about her friends, Melissa and Max.

The second half of the book takes us on the cross country road trip Jaouad embarks on to visit some of the people who wrote to her after reading her column. 

The story switches from past to present tense as Jaouad rediscovers what it means to live a life that isn't centred around hospitals. All while acknowledging that this is a rediscovery many people, including her friends, will not get to make. 

In not shying away from the difficult times or the joyous moments, Jaouad has written a compelling memoir that is hopeful without relying on false hope.

Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad is published by Bantam Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and is available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook format.

Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit

Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here. 

Rebecca Solnit is one of my favourite essayists, so her memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence was on my anticipated releases of 2020 list. So much so, that I have read it twice since its publication last March. 

Let's overlook the fact that it has taken me a year to actually review it! I read loads and took copious notes last year, but my concentration didn't stretch to writing full reviews so I am playing catch up. 

Many of the experiences Solnit shares are centred around the studio apartment in San Francisco that was her home for over twenty years. It is here that she grapples with the realisation that the "nonexistence" she feels is as a result of the patriarchy. 

That her instinct to disappear, by blending into the background of whatever situation she is in, is an attempt to avoid the wrath of men. An instinct, she contends, that many, if not all, women have because we internalise the idea that our actions are responsible for the abuse - in all its forms - we receive from men. 

Rationally we know that it isn't true but we have been socialised to act as if it is nonetheless. 

As with her essays, the themes Solnit explores here include gender based violence, feminism and its continued evolution, environmental justice, queer activism and politics, and the impact of fear and trauma on creativity. 

Recollections of My Nonexistence is an assured study of how Solnit found her voice; as a woman, as an activist, as a feminist, and ultimately as a writer. 

Solnit skilfully blends the personal, the political, and the cultural giving us an engaging memoir about reclaiming our power by stepping out of the shadows.

Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit is published by Granta and is available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook format.

A Still Life: A Memoir by Josie George

A Still Life: A Memoir by Josie George. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.

Josie George has lived with a chronic illness for most of her life. 

By the age of eight she was already a mystery to the many doctors she saw because no-one knew exactly what was wrong with her. In the years since, her diagnosis has changed multiple times. Doctors still cannot give her a definitive diagnosis. 

Along the way she has been belittled, dismissed and accused of exaggerating or outright lying. Experiences that will be depressingly familiar to anyone — particularly women — who has struggled to have their chronic pain or other chronic illness diagnosed and treated appropriately. 

A Still Life is divided into four parts; the winter, spring, summer, and autumn of 2018. Within each section we are also brought back to the "then" of George's childhood, how her illness impacted her time in school, the abusive relationship she experienced in her early teens, how her illness affected her ability to work, the beginning and ending of her marriage, the birth of her son, and her decision to use a mobility scooter to ensure her life is as active as it can be. 

The present day sections focus on George's day-to-day life with her son, how she observes the world around her and her growing relationship with Fraser, who lives in Denmark. 

It is in describing the small moments of her daily life that George's eye for detail shines through. She does not shy away from the realities of living with a chronic illness, especially when raising a child, but it is also through this lens that she challenges us to stop and take stock of our own lives. In being forced to slow down she has learned to make the most of the little things. Something that will probably resonate with a lot more people than it would have pre-pandemic. 

George's writing is intimate, precise and full on incisive observations about modern life. 

It may only be April, but I can confidently say that A Still Life will feature in my favourite books of 2021 round-up in December.


A Still Life: A Memoir by Josie George is published by Bloomsbury and is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook format

Heal Me: In Search of a Cure by Julia Buckley

Heal Me: In Search of a Cure by Julia Buckley. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.

When Julia Buckley reaches for a cup of coffee one day in 2012 she doesn't expect it to trigger a chronic pain in her arm that would last four years. Yet, that's exactly what happens. 

Is the pain a disorder in its own right or a symptom of an underlying medical condition? 

As is so often the case with chronic pain, especially when the person living with the pain is a woman, Buckley struggles to receive a definitive diagnosis. 

Buckley eventually quits her job as a travel journalist and moves back in with her mother because of the impact chronic pain has on her life. 

Her experiences with doctors and other health care professionals range from the positive to the frustrating and the downright dismissive. While some doctors try to find the cause of Buckley's pain, others dismiss it as being 'all in her head' and therefore not within their remit to treat. 

Again, an all too common occurrence for people — especially women — dealing with a  chronic illness. 

However, when all that is left are pain management strategies that focus on learning to live with chronic pain rather than attempting to cure it, Buckley decides to look for alternative therapies. 

What follows is a quest for a cure that takes Buckley all over the world. She tries medical marijuana in America. Visits the baths at Lourdes. Sees an herbalist in an extremely remote area of China. Sees traditional healers in multiple countries including a witch doctor in Haiti. Has a session with a guru in Austria and goes to see a 'miracle worker' in Brazil. 

A few years ago I would have rolled my eyes at almost all of the alternative treatments Buckley tries and wondered how the hell she got sucked into trying them in the first place. And I still found much of this book frustrating. 

But here's the thing about living with chronic pain: you will do anything to improve your symptoms, especially when the healthcare system has dismissed you repeatedly. This is an aspect of the 'wellness industry' that we don't talk about enough. The reasons why people turn to unproven treatments are many and varied, but at the core is usually a desire to feel better. Whatever 'better' means for the individual person involved. 

How we prevent people being negatively affected — emotionally, financially or physically — by alternative therapies and pseudoscience is something I do not have an answer for, but I no longer think it is as simple as pointing out the pseudoscience to people. 

I may not have made the same choices as Buckley, but I completely understand why she made them. 

Heal Me is Julia Buckley's personal story, but her experience of navigating a health care system  — the NHS in her case — for issues that are chronic will resonate with many people.


Heal Me: In Search of a Cure by Julia Buckley is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and is available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook format.

Beyond The Tape: The Life and Many Deaths of a State Pathologist by Dr Marie Cassidy

Beyond The Tape: The Life and Many Deaths of a State Pathologist by Dr Marie Cassidy. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.

Beyond The Tape by Dr Marie Cassidy was a strange book to read. I'm not sure whether the issues I had were down to me or the book itself. 

I really enjoyed learning about the differences between the Scottish and Irish legal systems and how that impacts the work Cassidy did as a pathologist in each country. Her discussions about the early days of forensic science and its continued evolution were fascinating. I could have read an entire book dedicated to just this topic. 

The cases detailed are many, varied and quite graphic in the level of information shared. This isn’t unexpected, it is a memoir about Cassidy's time as a state pathologist after all. In many of the cases mentioned the victims and perpetrators are named, while in other cases no names are given. Again, not unexpected given Cassidy worked on many high profile cases. 

My issue is with the tone in some sections of the book. There is a flippancy that surprised me. It's possible this is a personality or sense of humour thing that doesn't translate well into print. That these particular stories are best shared during a chat in a pub or over coffee, where tone is easier to detect. I found some of her descriptions really jarring. 

Beyond The Tape: The Life and Many Deaths of a State Pathologist by Dr Marie Cassidy is published by Hachette Books Ireland and is available in paperback, ebook and audiobook format. 

Intimations: Six Essays by Zadie Smith

Intimations: Six Essays by Zadie Smith. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.

Intimations by Zadie Smith is a collection of six essays written at the beginning of the pandemic and published last summer. It is very much a snapshot of life just before and during the initial lockdown. Or as Smith writes in her foreword, dated May 2020, she has tried to "organise some of the feelings and thoughts that events, so far, have provoked in me, in those scraps of time the year itself has allowed."

I know people won't want to read it simply because we are still in the middle of the pandemic, which I completely understand. That's how I feel about fiction and TV/film that is even remotely pandemic related. Yet I am finding comfort in reading essays about people's personal lockdown experiences. 

In less than a 100 pages, Smith explores the personal and the political - especially when writing about the impact the virus and the handling of the pandemic by both the US and UK governments  has had on people from already marginalised communities. 

The standout essays for me are Something to Do, Suffering Like Mel Gibson, and Screengrabs (After Berger, before the virus). 

Intimations: Six Essays by Zadie Smith is published by Penguin and is available in paperback, ebook and audiobook format.

The Crying Book by Heather Christle

The Crying Book by Heather Christle. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.

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"Most crying happens at night. People cry out of fatigue. But how horrible is it to hear someone say, "She's just tired!" Tired, yes, certainly, but just? There is nothing just about it." 

The Crying Book by poet Heather Christle is part prose poem and part longform lyrical essay. Christle blends memoir with cultural criticism and a scientific look at how and why we cry. Did you know that there are chemical differences between emotional tears and tears produced as a result of physical irritation? 

In the author's note at the beginning of the book, Christle informs us that The Crying Book has been five years in the making. It began as an idea to "make a map of every place I'd ever cried". The finished product is so much more than this. 

While Christle shares her experiences of depression, pregnancy and the abortion she had, her second pregnancy and motherhood, and her grief following the death by suicide of a beloved friend, she places these events in the wider context of a world which still hasn't reckoned with the stigma associated with mental illness and the racist history of white people using their tears as a weapon against Black people and people of colour. 

The Crying Book is a beautifully written and thought-provoking examination of the intersections between crying and art, feminism, politics and race.  

The Crying Boolk by Heather Christle is published by Corsair and is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook format.

Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O'Donoghue

Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O’Donoghue. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here. 

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Charlie Regan's life is complicated. Her career isn't going to plan leading to a side hustle selling intimate photos, her relationship with her best friend Laura is somewhat strained and everything is much harder to cope with because Charlie's father is terminally ill. 

When It Takes a Village the short film — based on her father's childhood on Clipim an (fictional) island off  the coast of county Kerry—  Charlie wrote and directed with Laura is accepted into an Irish film festival, things start to look up. 

There is just one problem, Charlie has never been to Ireland and she is terrified that everyone will hate the film and her portrayal of Irish people. 

Following the film's debut in Cork, Charlie decides to travel to Clipim in order to finally get some answers about how and why her father was the only survivor of the fire in the schoolhouse. Realising that this is a community full of secrets, with an inability to talk about them, Charlie soon wonders whether her life is in danger.

There were occasions when I thought the story was beginning to get away from O'Donoghue — that there were simply too many different strands to pull together into a cohesive plot — yet she proved me wrong. 

O'Donoghue writes great female characters, who happen to be queer, something that while we are seeing more of in fiction recently is still lacking in so many ways. Not every story with LGBTQ+ characters needs to be about coming out because gay, lesbian, bi+, trans, and non-binary people lead lives just as complicated as cishet people. Our sexuality is obviously important to us but in having it be one aspect of Charlie's life without being the only thing we learn about her, O'Donoghue provides the type of representation so many LGBTQ+ people — including me — crave. 

Scenes of a Graphic Nature is a novel about connection, love, family, and identity which balances the emotional with the humorous leading to a complex tale full of interesting characters. 

Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O’Donoghue is published by Virago and is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook format.

How Do We Know We're Doing It Right? by Pandora Sykes

How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? by Pandora Sykes. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here. 

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The subtitle of How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? is essays on modern life, which sets the tone before you’ve turned the first page. In these eight essays, Pandora Sykes examines the lure of the wellness industry, the ethics of fast fashion, the pervasiveness of burnout, life as a “middling millennial”, and the distinction between our private and public selves in the age of social media. 

From the outset, Sykes acknowledges her privilege informing us that “many of the anxieties I write about are, somewhat inevitably, middle-class.” For many people this qualifier may be where they put the book down, never to return to it. But in telling us this, Sykes privilege becomes a tool in her examination of modern culture. 

This is most evident in Get The Look, which blends her experience as a former style columnist with a deep dive into the murky world of fast fashion and its impact on the garment workers and the environment.

How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? is a thoughtful and well researched collection, written with warmth and precision. Sykes’ self-awareness ensures that each essay is more than a surface level look at the topics of the day. 

How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? by Pandora Sykes is published by Hutchinson—an imprint of Penguin Random House—and is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook format.

Pretty Sane by Nicola Wall

Pretty Sane by Nicola Wall. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.  

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From an early age Nicola Wall's family told her she had an active imagination. Nicola couldn't understand why no one believed her when she told them about things like the peacock on the cushion jumping out at her or the photos and pictures in her grandparents' house moving around. 

As she realises that not everyone experiences the world like she does, Nicola is much more selective in who she tells. She mostly keeps everything to herself. This is easier said than done, especially when she is diagnosed with schizophrenia. 

In Pretty Sane Nicola writes about Freddie for the first time. Freddie is the primary voice she hears. He has been with her since the beginning.

From her time as an inpatient in a psychiatric ward, to getting to grips with outpatient care, different forms of therapy and the trial and error involved in finding medication that works and ultimately her decision to live without medication; Nicola shares her story in an approachable manner that is both informative and easy to read. 

Pretty Sane is an excellent look at what life is like when you live with schizophrenia and the impact it has on not only your life, but your family and friends as well. This is definitely a book to read if you are looking to learn more about mental illness beyond depression and anxiety. 

Pretty Sane by Nicola Wall is published by Mercier Press and is available in paperback and ebook format. 

handiwork by Sara Baume

handiwork by Sara Baume. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here. 

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“This house is a house of industry.

It has four bedrooms, only one of which is devoted to sleep.” writes Sara Baume early in handiwork—her non-fiction debut—setting the tone for the exploration of creative process, grief and the migration of birds that follows.

Building the model birds—photographs of which are interspersed throughout the book—is the physical part of a process that, for Baume, includes learning about the migration pattern of the birds she is making. A learning that encompasses bird-lore and the lives of the men who studied birds, particularly John James Audubon and his book Birds of America which he illustrated. 

Baume’s grief is woven throughout handiwork, in the way that grief shows up everywhere following the death of a loved one.  

Speaking about her dad’s wake, Baume recalls a colleague of her mother’s—a man she barely knew—somewhat overenthusiastically informing her that “It hasn’t really hit you yet” and “It’s going to really hit you later.” A conversation familiar to many of us who have found ourselves in similar positions. 

The tellers of these truths mean it a kind way. They want to prepare us for what comes next. For what happens when the funeral is over and, later still, when people no longer ask how we are doing. The thing about grief is: it is different for everyone and it is not always possible to judge whether someone’s bereavement has “really hit” them or not.

handiwork is a tender and thought-provoking look at what it means to be an artist, in all its forms, written with all of the originality we have come to expect from Baume’s fiction. 

handiwork by Sara Baume is published by Tramp Press and is available in paperback and ebook format.

LARCs, Larks & Other Lovely Things Stories From Leitrim Aboriton Rights Campaign

LARCs, Larks & Other Lovely Things stories from Leitrim Abortion Rights Campaign. No Advance Reader Copies included. No affiliate links used. You can read my full disclosure policy here. 

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No one narrative will ever tell the complete story of the campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution in May 2018. It is simply not possible due to the sheer number of people and groups involved. Which is why I think it is important for people ad pro-choice groups to tell their own stories. Write them down, even if just for yourself. 

LARCs, Larks & Other Lovely Things is the story of the Leitrim Abortion Rights Campaign, a regional pro-choice group who canvassed as part of the national Together For Yes campaign and who continue to be members of the Abortion Rights Campaign. 

This collection of essays, speeches, letters to the editor, and recipes —yes, it includes recipes!—is a brilliant look at what campaigning in the North West of Ireland was like. It also covers the incredible work that Leitrim Abortion Rights continue to do in pushing for proper free, safe, legal, and local aboriton access in Ireland—because our work is far from over—and their support for the pro-choice campaigns in Malta and Gibraltar.

As someone who co-founded Kerry for Choice—an another rural pro-choice group and members of the national Abortion Rights Campaign—and was their convener and spokesperson for three years, so much of this book resonated; from having difficulty finding venues for meetings, to being on local radion and speaking at public events, and the practicalities of canvassing in rural areas, where getting from point A to point B often took longer than the the time spent knocking on doors.

LARCs, Larks, & Other Lovely Things is written and published by the Leitrim Abortion Campaign. To purchase copy, contact Leitrim Abortion Rights Campaign at leitrimabortionrightscampaign@yahoo.com.

 

The Love Square by Laura Jane Williams

The Love Square by Laura Jane Williams. Advance Reader copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. You can read my full disclosure policy here.

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Penny Bridges is enjoying life in London, but it is not without complications. The café owner and chef is a cancer survivor, which left her with fertility issues and difficult decisions to make when it comes to having children. 

While she would love a partner to build her life with, a series of disastrous dates shifts her focus away from looking for love. Enter Francesco, the handsome Italian chef. 

When her uncle becomes ill, Penny finds herself heading back to Derbyshire to run the family pub while he recovers. The timing isn’t great, but given everything he has done for Penny and her sister, Clementine, she is not in a position to refuse. 

But what does the move mean for her relationship with Francesco?

As she settles into life in the country, Penny finds herself drawn to Thomas—a man who doesn’t do monogamy. She enjoys their time together, which is all that matters. Right? 

Then there is Priyesh. 

Each relationship is completely different, but Penny soon finds herself having to choose between the three men.

Laura Jane Williams writes complex characters with ease. While I had some issues with the LGBTQ+ representation in Williams’ debut Our Stop, the LGBTQ+ characters in The Love Square are fully realised. 

The Love Square* is a thoroughly enjoyable rom com full of humour, compassion, friendships, familial relationships, explorations of what it means to live an intentional life, and, yes, romance. 

The Love Square by Laura Jane Williams is published by Avon Books and is available in ebook format from July 9th. The paperback and audio editions are available from August 6th.

The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery by Mary Cregan

The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery by Mary Cregan. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. You can read my full disclosure policy here. 

Content note: The Scar by Mary Cregan and my review deals with the death of a child, mental illness, suicide, psychiatric hospitalisation and electroconvulsive therapy.

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When her daughter Anna dies, shortly after she was born, Mary Cregan's life is changed forever. In the months following Anna's death, Cregan's grief becomes suicidal depression and she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. 

Following treatment with medication that does not improve her symptoms, Cregan is given electroconvulsive therapy. Something that was becoming less common by the 1980s, when Cregan was hospitalised. The ECT has the desired effect and Cregan is soon on the road to recovery—I say on the road because, as becomes clear in the book, recovery is a process.

The Scar by Mary Cregan is part memoir, part history of psychiatry, and part critique of the ways in which psychiatric illnesses and electroconvulsive therapy have been portrayed in popular culture. 

This is not an easy read subject wise, but it is well researched, skilfully written and movingly told. 

It is not a reading experience that I will forget any time soon.

The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery by Mary Cregan is published by The Lilliput Press in Ireland and by W. W. Norton & Company in the US. The Scar is available in paperback, audiobook and ebook format.  

I don’t use affiliate links, but if you like what I do and want to show your support you can buy me a coffee here. 

My Dark Vanessa By Kate Elizabeth Russell

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. You can read my full disclosure policy here. 

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Vanessa Wye was 15 when her relationship with her English teacher first began. So what that he was her teacher, they were in love. That counts for something, right? The answer for Vanessa is yes, their love counts for everything. At least it used to. Now she is questioning everything. 

Told across two timelines, her school days in 2000 and the growing Me Too movement of 2017, My Dark Vanessa* is an uncomfortable read, as it should be. Yet Kate Elizabeth Russell’s writing also makes it a compelling read. I can see why it is triggering for many people, particularly survivors of sexual assault, especially because Russell doesn’t shy away from depicting scenes of sexual abuse and rape. 

When a former student publicly states that she was sexually assaulted by Jacob Strane, Vanessa doesn’t know how to react. Strane insists the allegations are not true and Vanessa wants to believe him because the man she loved couldn’t possibly be a sexual predator.

Switching between the past and Vanessa’s present, we watch Strane groom Vanessa and see the hold he continues to have over her life 17 years later. As Vanessa rethinks their entire relationship her understanding of what really happened shifts, multiple times, as she grapples with the realisation that while she doesn’t see herself as a victim or survivor they may in fact be accurate descriptors for her. This evolution is really well handled by Russell and is as complicated and messy as you’d expect. 

It is difficult to discuss My Dark Vanessa without mentioning the controversy and discourse surrounding the novel’s publication. An essay in Gay Magazine by Wendy C. Ortiz explores the similarities between My Dark Vanessa and Ortiz’s 2014 memoir, Excavation. Ortiz’s shares her experience of the publishing industry and how some stories are considered too difficult when they are memoir, but are deemed worthy of large(er) marketing campaigns when they are fiction. 

In a note to readers on her website, published in response to Ortiz’s essay and the media coverage it garnered, Kate Elizabeth Russell says that “My Dark Vanessa, which I’ve been working on for nearly 20 years, was inspired by my own experiences as a teenager. I have previously discussed the relationships I’ve had with older men and how those relationships informed the writing of My Dark Vanessa. But I do not believe that we should compel victims to share the details of their personal trauma with the public.” 

Ortiz does not accuse Russell of plagiarism, which is how some news outlets reported the story, but she does ask us to interrogate not only whose stories get to be told but how they are told. These are necessary questions and should be welcomed, always. Nor does Ortiz insist that people who write fiction about sexual abuse must disclose their personal experience in order to do so. 

No one is calling for that. 

But there needs to be space to discuss disparities within the publishing industry, particularly when it comes to the voices of marginalised people, in a way that recognises the nuances involved.

I wish I knew how to achieve that. 

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell is published by Fourth Estate and is available in paperback, ebook and audiobook format. 

I don’t use affiliate links, but if you like what I do you can show your support by buying me a coffee here.