Category: Book reviews
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What are you laughing at?
I could tell a tale of a catastrophic accident at the printers, where sixty grandsworth of gargantuan printing machine is fouled up by someone feeding Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity into one end and Helen Joyce’s TRANS into the other, and turning the feed up to max. But that would be to entirely miss the point.…
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They may not exist but they keep producing good work
In the month that the Scottish courts finally went so far down the rabbit hole they’ve succeeded in convincing themselves that women don’t exist as a material entity, the tabloid press have reached the point where most people are aware that something rather silly is going on but most have yet to realize the gravity…
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A land of remembering and forgetting
“For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country … Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of…
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Twits, cops and sisters
Leading to: What can I say about politicians? Reflections Last night, I ended up drinking hot chocolate in a Wetherspoons in Bexhill at umph oclock in the morning and found myself flipping through a magazine – gosh look, Spoons have their own magazine! It said that Spoons inform themselves about what people think by listening…
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The People we need to know about and some things we can do
(and Kingdom of Olives and Ash review part 2) I started reading this book after October 7th because understanding what’s happening in Israel / Palestine had suddenly become priority one. So urgent did it seem that I wrote a hasty paragraph or two when I was only halfway through, because I was already thinking I…
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Kingdom of Olives and Ash
Writers confront the occupation edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman It’s hard to imagine what military occupation is like, if you’ve never had the misfortune to experience it. You try, and you’re never sure you’ve got there. It’s why I’ve been reading this collection put together in conjunction with Breaking the Silence, an organization…
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Winchester Writers’ Conference and the End of the World
How long ago was it? It feels like a hundred years, and just last year. Hang on, Terry Pratchett gave the plenary speech … When did he die? I picked up a book in the library and it reminded me of something important. It was … Okay … it was well over a decade ago.…
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Whodunnit?
Don’t ask me which women’s issue this article is about… I have written elsewhere about a “controversial” meeting that happened in my town a few weeks ago. It shouldn’t have been controversial beyond the room it took place in. If political groups want to talk to people with a range of views, whether they agree…
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No, this is the best feminist book … no, THIS is… No, wait…
We were sitting around cabaret tables, at the end of the main conference day. In front of us, a promising array of glasses and cutlery and other shiny things. At the top of the room, on the other side of an expanse of empty carpet that would no doubt soon be full of activity, long…
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All human life
All human life on the planet is born of woman – Adrienne Rich That quote introduces the editor’s column in the latest edition of The Radical Notion which I intended to lose myself in, but people just kept lending me books, and suggesting I read books, some of which were immediately irresistible and so the…
Kay Green 