Business as Usual, a very enjoyable novel of 1933 by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford, is about a world of working women in London in the early 1930s, with the breadline looming very close, and the terror of knowing that one week's salary lies between you and the street. Pennies are counted, stockings are darned, … Continue reading Business as Usual: Selfridges in the 1930s
I bought this book because I wanted to patch the gaps in my reading about immigration, and Lovers and Strangers deals with the 1950s to the present day. Although the book is marketed as focused on the Windrush generation, it's much more complex than that, and does a very welcome job of showing how immigration … Continue reading Clair Wills, Lovers and Strangers. An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain
I bought this imposing Harvill Press hardback on impulse while looking for something entirely different, and it held me enthralled for five evenings of reading. Before this, I didn't know much about the French Revolution, and I knew nothing about the years between the Terror and Napoleon's coronation. Madame de La Tour du Pin's memoirs … Continue reading The Memoirs of Madame de La Tour du Pin
Missee Lee (1941) is an adventure novel in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series, one of the two novels in the series whose extraordinary places and events really could not have happened. I don’t know how the Arthur Ransome Society would feel about this theory, but I’ve always held that Missee Lee, like Peter Duck (1932), … Continue reading Borrowed fire at sea: Mark Twain and Arthur Ransome
The continuing adventures of Sofia Khan have been much anticipated. I adored Malik’s first novel, Sofia Khan is Not Obliged, and its sequel begins very satisfyingly with the immortal words of ‘Reader, I married him’. This is of course the burning question at the end of Sofia Khan when she’s flying off to Karachi with … Continue reading Ayisha Malik, The Other Half of Happiness
Today's novel from the Really Like This Book's podcast scripts catch-up is about art: buying it, faking it, selling it, advising on it, collecting it, and valuing your life by what you say about it. Rose Macaulay’s novel The Lee Shore really is completely forgotten, but is a fascinating read. It’s one of a clutch … Continue reading Rose Macaulay’s The Lee Shore
In a review posted this week on Bustle, E Ce Miller gave us a list of the 50 great / important works by women we should all read. Imagine my feelings of smug self-validation when I found that I’d already read about a third of them, and that I was in the middle of reading … Continue reading Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home
