pickI‘ve never read Claire Keegan before, but I‘ve heard she‘s one of the best. This did not disappoint. The book has two timelines, one following a man on a seemingly ordinary day, and the other recounting his past relationship. There is a lot of discourse at the moment of relationships and what is expected of men and women in their ‘roles‘ and this book perfectly encapsulates all of it! A very simple and yet effective gut punch right at the issue.
pickThe subtitle for this trio of vignettes is “stories of women and men.” Specifically, they are stories about denial, desire, and threat. Claire Keegan never misplaces a word. No detail can be overlooked. Take, for instance, this sentence in “Antarctica,” a twisted tale about the quest for simple pleasure: “The cat was watching her, his eyes as dark as apple seeds.”
Perfectly unsettling, all.
Content. 💞
Recommended by at least 2 friends. I am already overreacting to all the sexism at work (who has work in engineering and still been "mistaken" for the secretary will see why). I need to brace myself for the rest ;)
pickSuch an important read. I like that it is written by a UK author, so she looks throughout the world at this issue. Though unfortunately a lot of this has the US as ground zero. It is things I knew but didn't "KNOW"
Both enraging and informative.
First book for #NFNovember @Bookwormjillk
At its simplest the argument goes like this: if women‘s sexual autonomy has given them wicked & tyrannical control over men‘s lives, then women‘s liberation is at the root of all male suffering. Therefore, the obvious remedy is to remove women‘s freedom and independence and to use specifically sexual means (like rape & sexual slavery) to do so. In other words, the problem is not women having sex but women having the choice of whom to have sex with
“It is not women, or even feminists, who have limited, frustrated, diminished, hurt, and damaged men but masculinity itself or, rather, our society‘s constricting, toxic, self-defeating version of what it means to perform being a man. Yet every time anybody tries to make progress in tackling this particular version of masculinity, the MRM rises up as a united voice to condemn and undermine the attempt.”
Laura Bates
Feeling very lucky since I have already started both!
#Bookspin - Men Who Hate Women part of my #NFNovember with @Bookwormjillk
and
#DoubleSpin is my #RandomClassic which I will be completing this month! with @thearomaofbooks
Watching Jeopardy from a few weeks ago, and I learned that this gentleman is the husband of Bonnie Garmus, who wrote Lessons in Chemistry. I may owe her an apology for saying that her characters didn‘t seem realistic. I can DEFINITELY picture this guy asking someone to pass the sodium chloride. 😜
