Thursday, 10 July 2014

Women Authors Only Reading Challenge

I finished my next lot of books! They were:

Go To Sleep - Helen Walsh
This book was a gritty and fairly terrifying look at a new, incredibly sleep deprived single mother, who just wants her baby to go to sleep. Oddly, while the depiction of the sleep deprived mother is realistic and effective, major plot points are completely unbelievable. For example, a large part of the plot hinges on one of the mother, Rachel's, young clients (she is a social worker) coming to check up on her after the birth. Still, it was good - it was reminiscent at times of Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin, and Sarah Moss's Night Waking.

The Little Black Book of Stories - A.S Byatt
I enjoyed this as I was reading it, but it annoyed me when I actually stopped to think about it. It's a collection of short stories, about everything from evacuees who saw 'a Thing in the forest,' to a woman who turns to stone, to a struggling artist and a (so privileged he doesn't know his own privilege) doctor. A.S Byatt seems to fall into that trap of casting the poor characters as pale, waif like, and skinny. When in fact people living in poverty are more likely to be overweight from eating too many carbs, because carbs are cheap, quick, and they keep without a fridge. But fat people just aren't as romantic as skinny people, are they? And why does the poor, but likeable, character, who happens to be a very talented artist, have to be pale? This story is the most modern of all of them, so it would be completely believable for her to be Somali, say, or Indian, or in fact any race other than Caucasian. But no. It is not to be.
My favourite story was the woman-who-turned-to-stone one.

Joe Cinque's Consolation - Helen Garner
I picked this up at random because I enjoyed Ms Garner's previous work The First Stone. It's not as good as The First Stone, in my opinion, but it's still good.

I'm not sure what will be next... any suggestions?
Thanks for reading!

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