As someone who reads a lot of books, I find it harder and harder to be surprised and enthralled with each new read completed. Stories that explore love, romance and family can often be repetitive, sometimes even predictable. This month’s novel was far from any of those things and left me lying in bed, AirPods in, unable to press pause on the audio.
Sara Jafari’sThe Mismatch was published by Penguin in 2021. It’s been on my list ever since, and I’m only sorry I’ve just got around to reading it. The book is at its heart a romance, but it also offers insightful musings on identity, religion and class, alongside many other poignant themes. The story jumps back and forward in time, following Soraya’s life in the 2010s and her mother Neda’s, spanning the latter third of the 20th Century. Through a cross-generational narrative, Jafari explores how these two women navigate their first loves and first heartbreaks, as well as wrestling with their identities as British-Iranian women.
We first meet Soraya at the end of her studies where she stands on the brink of adult life. As a result of her strict upbringing and Muslim faith, she is yet to have sex, engage in a romantic relationship, or have her first kiss. She is plagued by the fear that Allah is watching her, mostly instilled (and often used as a threat) by her family. On deciding that she must engage in ‘kissing practice’ to prepare her for adulthood, she starts to date Magnus who on the surface appears to be a typical rugby lad. On the outside, he is a player and completely not her type – perfect for some meaningless experimentation. However, in classic rom-com style, Soraya quickly discovers that there is much more to him than meets the eye.
In the same way that Soraya’s chapters explore her burgeoning romance with Magnus and her coming-of-age story, Neda’s story documents her own upbringing and her eventual marriage to Soraya’s father, Hussain. Beginning with life in 70s Iran, a place alive with political and social change, Jafari carefully depicts the complexities of being a Muslim woman and the simultaneous joys and challenges that it presents. Neda chooses to wear a Hijab, unlike so many women in Iran at the time who see them as a threat to women’s liberation. This interesting look at feminism and how it can mean different things to different women was really refreshing, especially for the romance genre. In the same way that Soraya wrestles with her identity as a woman in modern-day Britain, Neda faces the same challenges throughout her life in Iran and later in the UK too.
I’ve seen this book compared to Sally Rooney’s Normal People, and I can certainly see the similarities. Jafari writes scenes of love tenderly and with intimacy, and I found myself holding my breath across multiple pages in fear of disturbing the story. While love is the central theme of the novel and is brought to life masterfully, it’s the messier ongoings in the background that make it exceptional. The Mismatch depicts stories of addiction, abuse, toxic masculinity and misogyny, all while highlighting incredible friendships, fraught familial relationships and love in all its glory. There’s so much to be said about this book and I enjoyed every page, particularly the audio version which is beautifully read by Ajjaz Awad and Afsaneh Dehrouyeh.
If you’re looking for a page-turning romance that offers more than just surface-level appeal, this is the book for you. I adored Sara Jafari’s debut and can’t wait to read more from this author. Support indie bookshops by buying The Mismatchhere.
Words: Beth Barker
Beth Barker is a writer and blogger from Blackpool, now working in Manchester. She also co-hosts Up North Books, a podcast celebrating books and writers from the North of England.
Beth wanted to contribute a monthly review to NRTH LASS in order to shine a light on Northern women writing great books. The North is very much underrepresented in publishing and she hopes a monthly review throughout 2021 will showcase the talent Northern women have to offer.
For more book reviews and insights on publishing in the North, follow Beth on Instagram and Twitter.
The other day, I put forward the offer to write a piece for International Women’s Day. I had just finished The Female Eunuch and purchased The Feminine Mystique. I was feeling, once again, that I could put into words that very unique, but also somewhat universal concept of what it is to be a woman.
I wrote my first On Being a Woman essay this time last year. This was fuelled by a seething anger and profound devastation following the murder of Sarah Everard. It discussed violence against women, sexual harassment and how there are consistent attempts to silence both the female voice and female truth. This essay, one year on, isn’t necessarily intended to be a reflection. It will not say look how far we’ve come because at the moment this is not how I feel. What I feel is boredom; not apathy or fatalism but sheer boredom. A sense that as many famous placards so often read: I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit.
I am bored of being angry and I am bored of being conceived as boring. A stuck record. That outspoken one who won’t leave things alone. That girl who ruins other people’s fun. (I distinctly remember a mutual acquaintance telling me they were off to see Fifty Shades of Grey and she hadn’t wanted to tell me because I’d ruin it with my feminism.) I am bored of hearing that it’s not all men. I am bored of the patriarchy and I am bored of the perception that being a feminist is undesirable; that if I define myself this way I am purely here to ruin your fun. That I hate men and long for a world without them. That I’m complaining about solved problems and conceived notions. That I should bloody well recognise that we’ve never had it so good (and then, consequently, shut up).
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Germaine Greer infuriates a lot of people. Germaine Greer infuriates me. There are many reasons why this is the case, which in recent years has a lot to do with her attitudes towards inclusivity. At this point I’d like to make a full disclaimer: I do not intend to discuss this, I intend to focus on the fact that I have recently read The Female Eunuch and how I feel about that particular work. I propose taking a Roland Barthes-esque approach here; a focus purely on the text and less on the author.
The Female Eunuch is provocative. It’s pretty provocative now so when it hit shelves in 1972 it was even more so. It has to be read in context, which at times I struggled to do. It also took me quite a long time to read, which for me is never a good sign. As a twenty-first century reader I found that some of the arguments Greer made lacked a certain nuance. There’s a whole chapter on the womb (that ever present menace in the female anatomy), which felt like it ended with her telling me to just suck it up; if you want equality with men you can’t let a silly little thing like bleeding once a month get in the way. For me, being equal is not akin to being the same. It is possible to treat others equally, with the same levels of dignity, respect and worth whilst acknowledging difference, whether that be anatomical, social or cultural. This was gripe number one.
Number two came in the form of her appearing extremely critical of women in general, implying that as we are complicit in the patriarchy we are basically digging our own graves. Literally. I became more sympathetic to Greer’s discussions in the final few chapters on male violence towards women, but again Greer implies that part of the problem here is that within every woman is a masochist willing the event to happen. Feminism, like anything, is difficult. Not everyone is going to get on. Women are people too(!) and people don’t always see eye to eye, I get that, believe me. However, much feminist theory starts from the point that women are the largest underclass and they just haven’t realised yet. In order to achieve revolution (whether that be class, race or gender based) the oppressed class must become aware of their oppression and identify their oppressors. No one is ever going to get on with everyone, but as long as there is criticism and infighting within the oppressed group, their oppressors have nothing to fear. My main problem though is that in the book’s final pages I wasn’t left with any hope – no solutions, no breaks in the cloud – just a simple question: What will you do?
Become pissed off apparently. Greer pushes boundaries, which has invited scrutiny recently, but she’s been infuriating people for much longer than this for one simple reason: she’s a woman who has no qualms complaining and making people listen to her opinions. Those opinions may be questionable, but they are opinions, not facts, and I couldn’t begin to tell you the amount of questionable man’s opinions I’ve had to listen to over the years, often with no dissenting voice in the room. Everyone (women and men included) finds it easier to silence the female voice than the male’s. And this is what I am bored of.
I finished The Female Eunuch and said that it just didn’t feel relevant anymore. This is unfair. It is relevant because had it not been written then all the feminist writers I read today would not have had one of the cornerstones to this cannon. Also, a lot of the ideas are still applicable. Violence towards women is still an epidemic. The pressure from the patriarchy to look and behave a certain way is still there, only now there are more voices expressing dissent.
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I know that generally I have an innate desire to please. I write these kinds of pieces and desperately try to justify myself so as not to come across as difficult. I want my arguments watertight, factual, backed up with truth and statistics so as not to appear too emotional. Because as a woman, that’s where they dismiss you with the most ease, with the notion that you are simply hysterical.
As I write and voice my complaints I feel guilty. There are privileges I have that many women do not. The point of International Women’s Day has been to celebrate women’s achievements, not bring a downer on the whole thing with negative pieces such as this one. However, I shouldn’t feel guilty. I am not ruining anything, not playing the cynic or negating the marvellous things women achieve on a daily basis, but I am realistic. International Women’s Day is great but sometimes it feels like there’s a manipulation of this event into yet another capitalist machine that simply exists to placate women. You’ve got your day, what more do you want?
In the Victorian period women had to put up with such nonsense as the ‘wandering womb’, then came Freud and the idea that what us women were in fact suffering with was ‘penis envy’. Then Mid-Century capitalism told us that we had it all, what could we possibly want with feeling discontent? Extra measures were put in place to shield the middle-class housewife from the horrors of the world; we were placed in protective bubbles made up of laundry, hoovering and decent homemade meals and then they wondered why many felt trapped. How long is it going to take for it to be universally accepted that what is wrong is patriarchal systems and the incessant insistence of men to seek to define us.
Let women tell you what the problem is. When we visit doctors don’t tell women that the pain they are feeling is simply in their heads. Let women tell you why they are afraid to walk alone in the dark as opposed to simply exclaiming that it’s nonsense women feel this way because it’s not all men. Let women run for parliament without fear, let women make policy, enact change and have a say in the communities they participate in. Let women lead in areas where they are most affected and where they have the most expertise. Let it be the right person for the job, not the right man. Let us examine our language and reveal how ingrained the patriarchy actually is. Let women have autonomy over their own bodies and let women tell you no without fear of the repercussions. Let yourself take all women seriously, not just your wife, mother, grandmother, sister. Let yourself extend respect to women beyond your direct understanding; those of different races, ages, classes, abilities and cultures.
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Yet again I feel the record is stuck. This essay arose from the reading of seminal feminist literature and the hope that I would see how far society had progressed from the days of Germaine Greer and her female eunuch. I think feminism has progressed. I’m not too sure about society.
When women are still being murdered by strangers in public places at an alarming rate I find this difficult to believe. When even more women are being murdered by loved ones in the place they call home I find it harder still. When convictions for rape remain so alarmingly low and when truly representative statistics for all the above crimes remain so hard to come by I continue to feel despair. When I see and read that globally those who suffer most at the hands of the climate crisis and war are women and children I struggle to see the progress. Inequality for me is acting as if someone or something has less worth than you and ultimately I believe this still happens for women, especially in a global sense. Things have advanced somewhat in the West but there are still complexities. If it was solved I wouldn’t be writing this alongside countless others who are arguing similar points. Progress is not victory, but the small victories are important so that you know it’s worth continuing.
I am going to end this piece with a reading list. I am angry and I know I deploy a certain amount of wilful ignorance so that I am able to live my life day-by-day without internally combusting, however I dislike the notion that there is no hope. Hope for me is not expectation, it holds no guarantees and no disappointments. It is faith. I have faith that as long as women keep using the voices they have; those unique, compassionate, angry, intelligent, hopeful voices, that there will continue to be small victories. There will continue to be small victories that are big victories for those they directly affect, forming great triumphs on the road to a world that will continue to get better.
After all, no one suggests to me that my womb has found its way into my brain anymore so things must really be looking up. (Although I cannot speak for all women on this point, it’s probably still happening somewhere.)
Further Reading for Hopeful Futures:
Invisible Women – Caroline Criado Perez
My Life on the Road – Gloria Steinem
The Most of Nora Ephron – Nora Ephron
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis – Edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson
Difficult Women – Helen Lewis
Sharp – Michelle Dean
By the Light of My Father’s Smile – Alice Walker
Cassandra Speaks – Elizabeth Lesser
The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
Decisions and Dissents of Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Penguin Liberty Collection
Things I Don’t Want to Know – Deborah Levy
The Beauty Myth, Promiscuities & Vagina – (All) Naomi Wolf
The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan
Let Me Tell You What I Mean – Joan Didion
The Female Eunuch – Germaine Greer (if you dare…)
Saffron Rain lives and writes in Stockport. She was born and raised around Manchester, only moving away to get her degree and subsequent MA in English Lit in Sheffield. During this time she wrote ardently on the North, particularly female writers and filmmakers.
Her preferred form is the personal essay and she enjoys writing about topics that she connects to on a personal level. Some of these have appeared in independent publications and she shares longer pieces on her own blog. She loves to read, particularly women, and will take any opportunity to crowbar Joan Didion into a conversation.
While so far, this column has been used as a space to spotlight and celebrate new books by Northern women, I’m excited to take a slightly different approach in the year ahead. Platforming fresh voices remains an integral part of these reviews, but I’m also interested in sharing some iconic books written over the last century that I think are essential to the Northern literary canon.
This month’s pick marks the first of those: Pat Barker’sBlow Your House Down. Best known for her First World War trilogy, the third instalment of which won the Booker Prize, and more recently her feminist takes on ancient tales, I find this book often slides under the radar. I’ve pushed this into many hands since reading it, and every one of those people loved it, so I decided it was time to give this book its rightful spot in the NRTH LASS library.
Blow Your House Down was published in 1984 and follows the lives of a group of sex workers living in the North of England. Loosely based on the Yorkshire Ripper murders, the story is driven by a killer who roams the streets and targets vulnerable women. Despite the risk of death now associated with their jobs, they have children to feed and rent to pay – life must carry on. Like most sensationalised serial killer sagas, documentation of Peter Sutcliffe’s crimes often focuses on the man himself and the brutality of his murders. While fictional, Barker’s narrative places priority on the victims of such crimes and restores agency to the women impacted by the violence inflicted.
The working-class women in Pat Barker’s books are powerful, tender and complex, and Blow Your House Down is no different. Her intensive use of dialogue captures this brilliantly, crafting conscious and believable conversations between the characters. She incorporates a distinctive Northern dialect without patronisation and creates women worth falling in love with on the page. Written in the midst of Second Wave Feminism, Barker’s novel speaks strongly to the idea that sex work is work, and women who partake in such activity should be viewed no less than any other. During the Ripper investigation, prostitution was vilified by police and the media, and Sutcliffe’s victims were blamed in part for their own death. Blow Your House Down represents the multiplicitous perspectives of women and exposes the bigotry of this narrative.
Despite the grim circumstances faced by the women in this novel, the fierceness of their friendship is undeniable. They are comrades in arms, there for each other at every turn and brought together to fight against a common enemy. The women understand the danger posed to them by a patriarchal society and go to extreme lengths to ensure each other’s survival. This is demonstrated when another woman is savagely murdered by the killer, and her lover embarks on a mission to avenge her death – whatever it takes. The characters in this book fear the worst, but in friendship, they become more powerful than ever.
Above all, Blow Your House Down is a deeply honest representation of what it is to be a woman in a society rife with violent men. It highlights how minority groups are exposed to further risk, how working-class women suffer at the hands of men and how sex workers are blamed when men act out. The impact of this book is immense, and despite being written in the 80s, its social commentary remains more relevant than ever.
If you’re a fan of literary crime narratives with a strong message at their core, you will adore this touching and nerve-wrenching novel. Buy it here to support the indie bookshop community.
Beth Barker is a writer and blogger from Blackpool, and co-host of Up North Books, a podcast celebrating books and writers from the North of England.
Beth wanted to contribute a monthly review to NRTH LASS in order to shine a light on Northern women writing great books. The North is very much underrepresented in publishing and she hopes a monthly review throughout 2021 will showcase the talent Northern women have to offer.
For more book reviews and insights on publishing in the North, follow Beth on Instagram and Twitter.
I still don’t really think of myself as a carer. I’m not sure whether that’s because sometimes it doesn’t feel like I ‘do’ enough, or because my brain hasn’t really bought into the idea we’ve been sold of carers being someone different from us. It’s taken me a long time to process all of this and get to the point of setting up The Caring Collective.
My mum first became ill in 2017, and since then we’ve dealt with the lowest lows depression and anxiety have to offer. When my mum first became ill, I was 25, and had some big plans on the horizon, which I delayed until mum was back on her feet. Sitting down now to unearth some of those ideas again after five years, I’m struck by how much of a journey I’ve been on. A mostly painful one if I’m honest, but one that’s really made me think a lot about where we stand as carers and how I’d like to contribute to changing that.
The first time I really stopped to think about it and admit I might need some help to manage everything that was happening, I remember picking up my phone at 2am, sleeping in my childhood bedroom, and feeling slightly humiliated as I typed into Google ‘caring in your 20s’. I felt even worse when I saw that the first two pages of results were variations on how to find the right skincare routine, and how to take care of my ‘youthful figure’, and quickly diverted to Instagram to remind myself what I should be doing instead. It didn’t matter that I was exhausted, lost and terrified — I got the memo that these weren’t things I should be thinking about right now.
Being a ‘young adult carer’ (a term so bland I despair) is hard enough when you’re battling the narrative of ‘do it while you’re young’ and ‘make the most of this time to yourself’, without the extra guilt of trying to figure out whether you should even be talking about this stuff at all. Was there any wonder that in the five years I’ve been looking after mum, I’ve only met a handful of people in a similar situation. If 1 in 4 of us have a mental health illness in our lifetime, how come we haven’t heard from any of the people supporting them?
As I grew slightly more confident in recognising what my role in our situation really was (not just a good daughter, thanks guys), I then stumbled into the second barrier that carers, and especially those who are younger, encounter all the time. My identity was tied to another person, and in accepting I was a carer, I had to accept that my experience of this situation was deeply rooted in someone else’s reality. In reaching out for support and saying ‘hey, this is difficult’, was I undermining my mum’s own struggle, and even worse, was I betraying her trust by speaking up and asking for help?
One of the big things I wanted to deal with when I started writing about our experiences — my experiences — of what happened to mum was starting the messy task of separating what was happening to me, from what was happening to her. It felt impossible to try at first, and the self censoring was so real it had me reading back old diaries going ‘but, it probably wasn’t as bad I made out, maybe I was just being dramatic’, lest I accept that sometimes doing an inherently good thing, motivated by love, can feel totally, utterly hideous.
In the end, that was the realisation that made me believe there is a place for something like The Caring Collective.
It’s not a place where I claim to have all the answers (or in fact any on some things) but it is a place where the mixed middle of being a carer is brought out of the shadows. These are complicated feelings, never ever made any easier by a vow of silence we’re expected to take for fear we might say something that doesn’t fit with what we’re told: caring for someone you love is the easiest thing in the world, they’re the only thing that matters, and ‘you shouldn’t be worrying about something like that at your age’. It took me too long to realise that there are no rules with this stuff, it’s messy — but hearing so can be hugely helpful.
When I think about the power that something like The Caring Collective could have for liberating us all from the idea that you can’t talk about things like this, I feel incredibly hopeful — and for someone with experience of managing complex mental health issues — that is no small thing.
It’s likely that I will be caring for my mum in some capacity for a very long time, if we’re lucky. I don’t want that side of my life and everything I’ve learnt to be condemned to the pile of ‘not relevant’ just because it might not fit with what we’ve come to expect. Instead, I want everyone who sees themselves in some of what I describe to know it’s ok to want to share it. It’s ok to take up that space, and I’d actually really love it if you came and joined me.
Kate Oliver is a writer and charity professional, originally from Rotherham in South Yorkshire. Despite migrating south, she still spends a lot of time in the North supporting her mum, who is her inspiration for setting up ‘The Caring Collective’ and sharing her experiences of being a carer. When Kate isn’t in transit, she spends as much time as she can in cold water (but draws the line at the River Don).
In the autumn of 2021, the latest Sarah Moss arrived on the shelves of bookshops all over the country. While The Fell is much like any of her previous novels – suspenseful, meditative and intelligent – it feels entirely unique. Set in 2020, this is the first book I’ve read that directly tackles the enduring pandemic and its impact on life as we once knew it. Spoiler alert: it’s an absolute literary masterpiece.
The Fell is polyphonic, and while it’s narrated in third-person, it very much captures the inner thoughts of the novel’s key characters. Kate is the instigator of the story – a middle-aged woman who can no longer bear the two-week quarantine she has been placed under. While her son Matt plays his console upstairs, she slips out into the evening dusk for a quick solitary walk, something she has always done. Her neighbour Alice sees her leave, but against the advice of the home secretary during a time of suspicion and hostility, she says nothing. Despite hoping that no one will ever find out about her momentary escape into the great outdoors, Kate soon comes into trouble and incites an entire rescue operation.
Under any other circumstances, a plot like this might sound wholly mundane and even a little boring. But that really is the beauty of it. Amidst lockdown after lockdown, the most ordinary activities became a major event. One of my favourite things about The Fell is how Moss captures the intensity of isolation, crafting stream of consciousness narrations that, much like the experiences themselves, are pretty unbearable to read.
“Dust we are and to dust we shall return, well get on with it then, wouldn’t it be better sometimes just to do the returning than spend your life cowering away, weeks and months ticking by like this, not as if there weren’t epidemics then too, the original inhabitants, but they got on with it, didn’t they, people died and they were sad but they didn’t wall themselves up, they didn’t stop educating the children and forbid music, the living were allowed to live if you can call it that, Victorian mining, not that they lived long but maybe length isn’t how you want to measure it.”
Through characters like Kate and Alice, her elderly neighbour, Moss intelligently explores the varying nuances of experience during the pandemic. Their perspectives are multiplicitous. They understand the need for a lockdown and masks and social distancing, but they’re still frustrated by it. They know why regulations are in place, but they still criticise the messaging used by lawmakers and the media.
That was one aspect of the novel which I particularly enjoyed. Moss’ reflections on the language of the pandemic, phrases like ‘social distancing’ picked apart for their nonsensical nature. Looking back at the book now, especially since hearing the revelations of Downing Street ‘work events’, her characters’ critique of certain rules hits hard. The author exposes the stupidity of bans on walking, mentioning how the police flew drones and spent countless hours chasing people back indoors with the threat of fines or arrests. The Peak District setting makes the plot particularly poignant – these characters have an affinity with the natural world, and their lives completely change when that’s taken away from them.
As well as exploring one community’s experience of pandemic life, The Fell also celebrates the camaraderie, friendship and compassion witnessed throughout. As much as it is a criticism of transient rules and our desperation to break them, it is also a testament to the relationships that pulled us through. Neighbours support each other, both practically and emotionally, and even during their worst moments, the community pulls together for survival.
Sarah Moss is a champion of a writer. If you loved the dark and powerful narratives of Ghost Wall and Summerwater, you’re bound to enjoy the latest in her unmissable lineup.
The Fell was published by Picador in 2021, and you can purchase it here.
Words: Beth Barker
Beth Barker is a writer and blogger from Blackpool, now working in Manchester. She also co-hosts Up North Books, a podcast celebrating books and writers from the North of England.
Beth wanted to contribute a monthly review to NRTH LASS in order to shine a light on Northern women writing great books. The North is very much underrepresented in publishing and she hopes a monthly review throughout 2021 will showcase the talent Northern women have to offer.
For more book reviews and insights on publishing in the North, follow Beth on Instagram and Twitter.
There is a distinct comfort in knowing that certain people are still around. A reassurance in knowing that there are people out there who see the world in ways that seem familiar to oneself. A relief that there are those who are able to put into words those things that at the time you are not capable of doing. When we lose these people, known intimately to us or not, then we are left with a certain empty feeling; not simply as a result of the physical yet metaphorical ‘hole’ they leave behind, but also the emptiness of knowing that we are losing a certain viewpoint on the world, one which we found to be sound, wise and safe.
I am reliably informed that a request to write this piece arrived shortly after the news broke, during which time I had received several messages from friends, enquiring as to my wellbeing and sending me love. Due to my complete ignorance of the current facts this was strange, but it being the 23rd December, a welcome addition to the festive period. Six days have since elapsed in which several paragraphs have been discarded after numerous failed reworks; my only success coming in the form of a few (potentially) throwaway sentences. Instead, on this, the sixth day, I have reread two collections of essays; Slouching Towards Bethlehemand The White Album, in the full knowledge that it is only once I feel comforted that I will be able to find my own words.
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Several times over the past week I have been posed with one striking question: How does one go about writing a tribute to someone who is so immortal? Although I will gladly take any opportunity to crowbar the name ‘Joan Didion’ into any conversation, I have been consistently struck these past seven days with the futility that lies in trying to write about her life. She did it for us. If you require an obituary, read Where I Was From. Social critique: Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Intimate glances into the author’s psyche: The White Album. Advice on how to grieve such a loss: The Year of Magical Thinking. When talking to a friend yesterday there were three words I returned to over and over and over again: she’s eulogised herself.
I am unable to tell you anything about Joan Didion that Joan Didion has not already told us. It is impossible to write a legacy without simply using her own words. I do not mean that the odd quote here and there is useful in understanding her life, rather I mean it quite literally. Everything she wrote is so well crafted, so intimate, so personal and so subtly powerful that it would be wasteful of me to attempt anything new. Her legacy is a unique one, in that it is she who lays the most claim to it.
Five years ago, I experienced a grief so intense I felt I had lost my personality. I knew there were many things I had just lost in the space of three days, perhaps most importantly to me, a unique viewpoint on the world. Upon my uncle’s death there were certain people who wrote about his life, his work, whatever legacy it was he had left behind and I hated it. I do not remember much from those first few weeks and did not put pen to paper aside from once; in the haze of my memories I distinctly remember writing down how strange it is that when one dies we no longer have control over who we are. How it is so easy to be interpreted, reimagined and redefined. This scared me. The only thing I wanted was for him to be able to speak for himself. To lay claim to his own legacy. To fashion his own eulogy.
Joan Didion taught me about grief. The Year of Magical Thinking was avoided for as long as I still had other Didion to read. There was something within my being that knew that once I began her account on how to navigate unimaginable loss, the one I had felt would have some more finality. I knew that through the reading I would be moving closer to some kind of acceptance. It took me three years but it made me feel sane. I was acutely struck by the moment in which she is urged to remove John’s clothes and shoes, a task she logically understands but is unable to comprehend and therefore do. What will he do when he comes back, she wonders, as upon his return he will most certainly need both his clothes and his shoes. When you know exactly how this madness feels, someone writing it down and having the courage to publish makes you feel the sanest person in the world.
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It was my closest school friend who introduced me to Joan. (Not personally, although it’s often felt that way.) As I’ve shared before, he had taken a work-related trip to the States and returned with an edition of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which he promptly leant to me uttering the words, “you’re a woman who can’t help but include herself in her writing, you’ll like her.” At the risk of cliche, our first encounter was transformative. I didn’t simply like Joan Didion, as my friend had suggested, I was completely enamoured.
The first words I ever read of Joan Didion’s attributed suicide, divorce and prickly dread to the Santa Ana winds. She said they worked on the nerves, disrupted your breathing and helped hillsides to spontaneously combust. We are being told this as a prelude to a story about Lucille Miller, a thirty-four year old woman who was tried and convicted of murdering her husband on Banyan Street in the middle of the night via their 1964 Volkswagen. This is extraordinary journalism and even in my ignorance, with that first paragraph I was able to see that for her, place matters. It influences everything; lives, language, loves. It determines our attitudes and our destinies. It soothes us or it works on the nerves. It shapes our identities. It is not a mere backdrop for the players on this stage, rather a character within its own right, an integral part of the action, a plot device waiting to pounce.
Time and time again Joan’s own words have been used to describe her: a place belongs to the person who claims it the hardest. Although she is using this in relation to James Jones and how for her, he lays claim to Hawaii, the words unsurprisingly are the only ones that can do justice to what she was to California. I have never been to California, but in the California of my mind’s eye it is Joan Didion’s. It is sun-kissed, sixties hedonism and it is the Manson Family Murders. It is Jim Morrison arriving late, or not at all, to record with the Doors. It is San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento and inevitable wildfires. It is a land where rain is a mystery, water a fascination, rattlesnakes a certainty. It is endless highways, the Pacific Ocean, car travel and the Beverly Hills Hotel. It is synthetic light, migraines, dinner parties and endless absurdities. It is one Pan Am flight from Honolulu and it is the final frontier. It is now, thanks to Joan Didion, one of my greatest obsessions. A mystery so intimate to me I wonder if I ever need go.
*
For days I have been attempting to vocalise how Joan’s writing actually makes me feel. I have come up with nothing aside from feelings of being overwhelmed. I am always overwhelmed by emotion, neither sad nor happy. As I write I come to realise that she encapsulates a certain melancholy; a word that for me evokes feelings of desolation, emptiness and heartache alongside a certain comfort or reassurance.
I have turned to Joan’s writing for consolation many times over the past two years. More frequently than not, the center has not been holding. I have turned to Joan as her work reminds me that there is a universality in chaos, in dread, in the impending sense of the end of the world. Generation after generation has stood on the precipice of the world collapsing in on itself and remarkably, every time, it does not.
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There is much uniqueness in Joan Didion’s writing but there are two things I find particularly striking. The first is her ability to explore some of the most mundane things with such intricacy that they become the most exciting and enchanting things in the world. The essays Holy Water and Bureaucrats are excellent examples of this. In one, she visits the Operations Control Center for the California State Water Project and in another Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation’s Operation Center. Neither of these are particularly exciting places yet as Didion notes the minutiae in their workings and how her own thoughts and feelings interact with these places they become sensational. I knew when I was gripped to an essay on ‘the 42 mile loop’ that I was reading a writer like no other.
The second is her capacity to include so much intricacy in the sensational that they in turn become mundane. As in Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream, (the story chronicling Lucille Miller and the death of her husband) where we are told that after Miller has given birth following her incarceration her elder daughter came to take the new baby home in a white dress with pink ribbons. We are consistently brought back down to earth. Told something suddenly, in an often offhand manner, that changes the whole feeling. This could happen to you. This could happen to anyone. One day you sit down to dinner, and life as you know it ends.
*
Reading Joan Didion did not make me want to become a writer. Reading Joan Didion assured me that I am a writer and taught me why. Why I Write is one of the most sensible things I have ever read. Why I Write taught me to unlearn everything I thought I knew about grammar. Told me to treat each sentence as if it were a melody, adding the rests and the short notes wherever I felt they should be. She taught me that writing is an art form, and that whenever I shift the structure of a sentence, I change it in the same dramatic manner as taking a photograph from an entirely different angle. She spoke to us often of her own doubts and reassured us that everyone has the feeling that they are sometimes simply passing as the person they think they are or would like to be.
In the preface to Slouching Towards Bethlehem Didion claims that there is one thing we always need to remember: ‘writers are always selling someone out.’ I reread this yesterday and, as always, was amused until I began to wonder who is it I am selling out by writing this piece. I still don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if it’s Joan, I’m selling out what she actually meant, what her true point was through some well-meant misinterpretation. I am, however, more inclined to believe that in this instance the person really being sold out is myself. Never will my (currently unfinished) novel land in the aged yet eccentrically expressive hands of the remarkable Ms Didion. Never will I be able to express to her how it was she who helped me make sense of my burning desire to work things out through the written word; that need to grasp a permeance in the midst of chaos.
Maybe I am selling myself out through what I now feel has become some kind of intellectual love letter to a woman born generations before myself, on the other side of the world, in a place I have never been, with whom I feel I have such a strong connection purely due to her exceptional command of the written word. Joan Didion taught me that there is a place in fact for women’s voices and that there is a place in journalism for the personal essay. Order can be found in the deepest disorder. Life is always there, even in the midst of grief. Nothing objective is interesting.
Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.
Joan Didion
1934-2021
Saffron Rain lives and writes in Stockport. She was born and raised around Manchester, only moving away to get her degree and subsequent MA in English Lit in Sheffield. During this time she wrote ardently on the North, particularly female writers and filmmakers.
Her preferred form is the personal essay and she enjoys writing about topics that she connects to on a personal level. Some of these have appeared in independent publications and she shares longer pieces on her own blog. She loves to read, particularly women, and will take any opportunity to crowbar Joan Didion into a conversation.
Beth Barker’s final book review for 2021 comes in the form of Abundance: Nature in Recovery, a collection of literary essays by Karen Lloyd, a writer from the Lake District in the North of England.
As we entered the autumn season, the shelves of bookshops were flooded with fresh literary talent. One book that stood out was Abundance: Nature in Recovery, a collection of literary essays by Karen Lloyd. With the climate crisis becoming increasingly urgent, the publication of this book felt particularly important and necessary.
Abundance is a work of art in which the literary and natural worlds collide. For many, nature writing can be overwhelming, but Lloyd’s writing is refreshingly accessible. The book’s purpose is to explore abundance and loss, in part concerning itself with the damage done to our environment. Lloyd writes:
“When I turn on the news or read a newspaper, I am assailed by all the losses in the natural world. The natural world is being flushed out.”
The book opens with a bold question: what kind of future will our children and grandchildren have on this planet? The reader gets the feeling that in this book, we’re going to find out. Throughout several essays, signifiers of change are explored, from the toxic algal blooms in the Lake District National Park to the ferocious Storm Desmond and floods that ensued. While these events and occurrences draw our attention to the ever-pressing ecological crisis, causing us to dwell on them is not the author’s intention.
“Something in my neural pathways blocks me when I try (admittedly not very hard) to imagine what things will be like for my boys – for my two young adult sons – and for their one-day families. Will they have families? Is it OK to continue having families?”
Abundance, I believe, is a book partly about hope and partly about seeing things in a new light. Told through joyous narratives that weave between well-researched facts and personal experiences, Lloyd’s essays provide a manifesto for change. She believes the solution to our problem is to reconnect with and repair our relationship to the earth – to encourage the alignment of humans and the natural world. As well as documenting the disasters we face, Lloyd also draws our attention to the incredible work done by conservationists and calls for education reforms to make natural education a priority.
Among other things, Lloyd’s work exudes a pure love for nature and what it has to offer us as individuals, communities and as an entire species. Whether it’s wolves, whopper swans, damselflies or beavers, these essays are full of passionate explorations of the world around us. Wild swimming and woodland hikes remind us that there is so much beauty to enjoy outside of our echo chamber – seeing it might just change our perspective entirely. “Let’s seed the idea of return through the seeding of languages that wander through the world. If we want it, all we need to do is imagine it into being: 3… 2… 1… go. Hearts and minds. What you don’t love, you can’t save. Save what you love.”
Karen Lloyd is a writer and environmental activist from the Lake District. Abundance: Nature in Recovery was published in September by Bloomsbury. You can purchase it here.
Words: Beth Barker
Beth Barker is a writer and blogger from Blackpool. She is the co-host of Up North Books, a podcast celebrating books and writers from the North of England.
Beth wanted to contribute a monthly review to NRTH LASS in order to shine a light on Northern women writing great books. The North is very much underrepresented in publishing and she hopes a monthly review throughout 2021 will showcase the talent Northern women have to offer.
For more book reviews and insights on publishing in the North, follow Beth on Instagram and Twitter.
As the year draws to a close and the nights draw in, candlelit reading becomes an absolute essential. November marks the launch of the perfect accompaniment: Sarah Schofield’sSafely Gathered In. Published by the incredible Manchester-based Comma Press, this electric short story collection is definitely one to add to your winter reading list.
“A woman grows increasingly annoyed by her husband’s emails, offering advice and reminders even months after his death… A taxidermist dreams of preserving one of his clients after she takes him out for a coffee… A grieving nurse is troubled by her daughter’s fascination with The Iron Lady…”
With style comparable to Sarah Moss and the ability to evoke unease like Naomi Booth, Schofield’s storytelling certainly leaves a mark on her readers. One of the potent threads running through the collection is an obsession with objects. Schofield interrogates how they define us, our relationship to them and what they can eventually come to represent. This is the feeling delivered by the title story – Safely Gathered In – crafted in list formation to depict the contents of a series of storage units. While the idea seems simple, I loved how these inventories brought people and personalities to life without making their presence known. Powerful and unsettling, this story really sets the tone for the whole collection.
My favourite story opens the collection, cleverly entitled Dead Man’s Switch. Emmy, the plot’s protagonist, grows increasingly annoyed by her husband’s emails offering advice and reminders even months after his death. Whether it’s home insurance or her upcoming MOT, David’s words of wisdom continue to arrive in her inbox. Sharing the annoyance with her sister Kath as she tries to move on with new partner Gary, the speight of emails allow Emmy to reflect on her old relationship as well as the new. I loved how this story sparked thoughts about technology and how the modern age we’re living in allows us to extend our lives beyond expiration. Schofield also played with objects in this story to experiment with ideas of memory, loss and grief. Fisherman’s Friends, knitting needles, old books. All of these objects define something, and the author allows the reader enough space to decide what that is.
“It’s their last day on the beach and Emmy slips out her phone while Gary goes to get ice creams. There is another email from David. It is a reminder to cancel or renew their wine subscription. She scrunches her toes into the sand, heat flashing behind her eyes. She presses reply.”
Another critical theme reflected in Schofield’s stories is motherhood. Keenly observed and told with captivating honesty, she captures the trials and tribulations of family life. In Termination Happy Meal, a mother takes her teenage daughter to a McDonalds, presumably after visiting the abortion clinic. Told over less than two pages, the story casts a searing light on the wrought
nature of mother-daughter relationships. Again explored through objects in the story, Schofield brings to life the conflicts of growing up and the decisions that define our lives. For a story of so few words, it really is a triumph.
I was lucky enough to hear Sarah read from her collection at a pre-launch event: a short story salon hosted by Blackwell’s Manchester. Reading alongside the incredible Lucie McKnight Hardy and Vanessa Onwuemezi, it was a fantastic opportunity to hear more about the collection in real life after such a long time without in-person book events. Schofield read eloquently and gave some key insights about her craft, particularly how she likes to write and how her stories come together. If you’re looking for a true example of how to create haunting, bold and brilliant short fiction, Sarah Schofield is the beacon to look to.
Safely Gathered In was published in early November 2021 by Comma Press. Support your local bookshop or buy your copy here.
Words: Beth Barker
Beth Barker is a writer and blogger from Blackpool, now working in Manchester. She also co-hosts Up North Books, a podcast celebrating books and writers from the North of England.
Beth wanted to contribute a monthly review to NRTH LASS in order to shine a light on Northern women writing great books. The North is very much underrepresented in publishing and she hopes a monthly review throughout 2021 will showcase the talent Northern women have to offer.
For more book reviews and insights on publishing in the North, follow Beth on Instagram and Twitter.
Dr John Sharpe of London, who in 1957 […] took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two-year-old American on her way to India.
Knowing only that she had broken an engagement […] he said, “You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want with your life.”
And so begins the dedication to My Life on the Road. Gloria Steinem attributes a great deal to Dr Sharpe’s bravery, knowing that had she not met this man who believed the law to be wrong, the shape of her life would have looked extremely different. I don’t believe that had this baby been born it would have been at a disadvantage, suffered from bad parenting, nor had a bad life, but that is entirely irrelevant to the argument.
The abortion-row’s focus sits in the wrong place, so often focussing on the case of the foetus; the thing that is still within the realm of the abstract, that exists but is far away, indistinguishable, a possibility, a feeling. The pro-life camp views the child-bearer as a secondary concern and the pro-choice contingent spend their time trying to re-establish the primary focus, to shift it back to the woman. For it is she who is tangible, who is present, she who has thoughts, feelings and dreams. And it is she who has ironically been allowed to believe she has options.
It has been possible in the UK to access a safe and legal abortion, financed by the National Health Service since the Abortion Act of 1967. The language used in the act leaves room for interpretation, meaning that all women could effectively choose abortions, citing a negative impact on their own, the child’s, or their family’s mental health. The Women’s Movement’s focus on reproductive rights as responsible healthcare assisted in the passing of Roe v Wade in the US Supreme Court, which in 1973 set the precedent that it was unconstitutional to deny women the right to choose whether to go ahead with pregnancy. These acts however were not the beginning of abortion. Abortions and, perhaps more significantly, attempted abortions, have been taking place for millennia. The problem is not abortion, it is the criminalisation of women’s autonomy.
Texas has always been a key battleground. It was Texas where Jane Roe tried and failed to receive an abortion and took her case to the Supreme Court, and it is Texas that seems to have been trying to reverse the decision ever since. To disallow the termination of pregnancy from any time after the six-week period is akin to disallowing the termination of pregnancy in its entirety. There are no exceptions, including cases of rape or incest. It is simply illegal to aid in facilitating an abortion for any woman who has surpassed the six-week mark. As a woman, I know what this means, but I’ll put some of it into context for those readers who don’t go through a menstrual cycle. Most women will notice something is amiss when they skip a period. This could be a few days after sex occurred, a couple of weeks, or in some cases, if a cycle had just begun, another four weeks. This is of course assuming that the person has a regular cycle, keeps track of her cycle, or knows when her next period is due. If none of these apply, NHS England advises waiting at least twenty-one days after sex to take a pregnancy test in order to get an accurate result. That’s three weeks, half your time. In blatant terms it is unrealistic for women to notice a change in their body, find out they are pregnant, make a decision and book an abortion prior to six weeks. This law says to women if you have sex, if you enjoy being sexually active, or if you are the victim of assault, you must bear the consequences, quite literally, for the rest of your life. There is no comparative law regarding a man who impregnates a woman for, as has been famously observed, ‘if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.’
As long as women can get pregnant there will always be successful and unsuccessful terminations. What effective legislation does is eradicate the need for ‘backstreet’ abortions, procedures that are vastly different depending on what women can afford, what their social background is, their race or their level of education. Prior to equal access to reproductive healthcare lucky women could afford to access safer abortions by bribing doctors and manipulating health assessments. Those not-so-lucky accessed abortions in high-risk settings; where the procedure was not performed by a medical professional, the environment unsanitary and the tools unclean. The women who suffered this fate and the women who have died accessing illegal abortions throughout our collective history is countless. When these facts are taken into consideration the issue goes beyond being for or against the act. The war on abortion is a war on women, where the casualties, although often anonymous, are in their thousands.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued, ‘The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.’ These laws maintain female oppression. It tells women they are not responsible enough to make decisions regarding their own bodies, yet paradoxically are responsible enough to raise a child. Steinem believed, “female bodies are still the battleground, whether that means restricting freedom, birth control and safe abortion in order to turn them into factories, or abandoning female infants because females are less valuable for everything other than reproduction. Anti-abortion laws reinforce ideas that a woman’s worth is her capacity to reproduce. They limit social, personal and professional progression. They maintain an order that is best suited to eras gone by. They regulate social mobility; rich, white women will continue to have access to safe reproductive healthcare. They enforce psychological and physical trauma on fifty-one percent of the population and all this in America; the land that proclaims itself to be so civilised and so free. Yet, as Ginsburg noted, at no point in the Constitution of the United States does it feature either the word ‘woman’ or ‘freedom’. Until the notion of the ‘land of the free’ is universally applicable then the USA is built upon a lie and masquerading its civility.
I am privileged to live in a country where I have the right to a safe and legal abortion, without question, but this does not leave me unaffected by events in the US. Every time a court rules against women it sets the prescient that it is okay to treat women in this manner; it is okay to not respect women and to not allow women the dignity to make their own choices. The right to life, which the pro-lifer’s hold so dear, does have an essentiality in this argument, it just depends which you value more. The right of the woman, she who is here, who is conscious, who has agency, who is taught she has choices, or the right of the unborn.
I’ve never seen the decision to abort as one taken lightly. I’ve always witnessed it approached with an element of doubt, with a concern for the practicality of the situation and a consideration of how well they would be able to provide for a child. The decisions to terminate that I have witnessed have come not only from a place of self-care but care and love for the possibility of their child. I’ve never seen the decision made with no talk of regret or without the wonder as to what life may look like if they were to follow through. I have only ever seen this decision taken with courage and trust in their inner voice, that engagement with a deeper intuition that tells us our most blatant truths.
For me, the central argument is not whether abortion is morally wrong. As long as women can get pregnant, women will get abortions; there is no legislation, no law, no fine, no jail-time that will stop that simple fact. The central argument, for me, is whether society respects women enough to allow them the basic human right of being able to access a medical procedure in a safe and professional environment. The central argument is whether women’s lives are valued enough to let them be lived. Do we value women enough to not pursue needless criminal charges, to not let them die in back rooms from unsafe and unsuccessful interventions.
The sheer joy at the success of Roe v Wade and the countless women who put pressure on government to change the law is under threat and has been for a long time. Because the right to access legal abortion has been commonplace for the entirety of my life it is easy to slip into habits of believing that this is an already conquered fight. But it is not; when it is so easy for laws to be reversed, when reproductive healthcare is not a basic right globally, there is still work to be done.
Until all women have access to safe, legal abortions and are afforded the dignity to make their own decisions regarding the body they inhabit, we are not equal. And until we are equal we deserve the right to be angry and we reserve the right to demand change.
‘I ask no favours for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks.’
Sarah Grimke
Saffron Rain lives and writes in Stockport. She was born and raised around Manchester, only moving away to get her degree and subsequent MA in English Lit in Sheffield. During this time she wrote ardently on the North, particularly female writers and filmmakers.
Her preferred form is the personal essay and she enjoys writing about topics that she connects to on a personal level. Some of these have appeared in independent publications and she shares longer pieces on her own blog. She loves to read, particularly women, and will take any opportunity to crowbar Joan Didion into a conversation.
August marked the publication of Pat Barker’s The Women of Troy, one of my most anticipated reads of 2021. Having devoured The Silence of the Girls, Barker’s feminist retelling of Homer’s Iliad,it only felt right to dedicate our August column spot to its continuation.
While The Silence of the Girls ends by describing the fate of Troy, her latest novel delves into the aftermath. The book recaps the Greek invasion, beginning from the packed interior of a wooden horse. Barker describes the scene as the men await the coming battle, namely Pyrrhus, the teenage son of the late and great Achilles. He is nervous, fearful of death and desperate for the glory that will define his future. From a reader’s perspective, it’s easy to question why a book about women should begin with such an extended look at a group of men. However, we soon realise that interrogating masculinity, hierarchy and power is central to understanding their story.
Survival is a defining theme throughout The Women of Troy. Like all wars, both ancient and contemporary, Barker reminds us that they are brutal and unrelenting. In this case, the tragedy of war leaves behind a group of women, captured into an unknown future after the sacking, burning and massacring of their home city. We receive a stark and lasting reminder of this from Briseis, the book’s central narrator.
Since she is carrying the last child of Achilles, she is married off to one of the Greeks and granted her own servant – Amina. Strong willed and fearless at times, Amina insists on giving their former leader a proper burial after his body is dishonoured by the victorious soldiers. At this moment, Briseis brings her back to reality: “Look, Amina, if you’re going to survive, you’ve got to start living in the real world. Troy’s gone. In this compound, whatever Pyrrhus wants, Pyrrhus gets.” From the very beginning, survival is firmly in the minds of the Trojan women – no matter what it takes.
As established in this scene, sisterhood is incredibly important to The Women of Troy. Much like The Silence of the Girls, Barker skips out on the glorification of military success and instead pays real attention to the relationships, thoughts and experiences of the Trojan women. Their sufferings are intense, and while the classics may have explored this to a degree, many feel their stories have gone untold for far too long.
Subversions and retellings of the classics have grown increasingly popular over the last decade, particularly those that offer fresh and feminist perspectives. While the likes of Madeline Millar, Natalie Haynes and Elodie Harper have put their own stamp on the myths of the past, Barker reaches new levels of originality. By combining a contemporary voice and completely overthrowing the language that you’d expect to find in an epic, she brings something new and accessible to these stories like no other. At times comical and at others heart-wrenching, she makes the stars of classical mythology likeable, intriguing and painfully real.
As the Greeks look forward to their glorious return, equipped with the spoils of war, the bonds between them quickly begin to wither. While centering and elevating the experiences of women, Barker tells a tale that brings power, masculinity and the fragility of war into sharp focus. Perfect for people who enjoy viewing ancient history through a contemporary lens, this is a glittering achievement from the highly-acclaimed writer.
Pat Barker’s The Women of Troyis published by Penguin’s Hamish Hamilton. Support indie bookshops by purchasing it here.
Words: Beth Barker
Beth Barker is a writer and blogger from Blackpool, now working in Manchester. She also co-hosts Up North Books, a podcast celebrating books and writers from the North of England.
Beth wanted to contribute a monthly review to NRTH LASS in order to shine a light on Northern women writing great books. The North is very much underrepresented in publishing and she hopes a monthly review throughout 2021 will showcase the talent Northern women have to offer.
For more book reviews and insights on publishing in the North, follow Beth on Instagram and Twitter.
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