Female writer Archives -

THE SECRET DIARIES OF MISS ANNE LISTER – I KNOW MY OWN HEART ed by Helena Whitbread

Now here are the diaries of a 18th century lesbian. I don’t know what I thought was going on back then, but DAMN. Charmingly, they were discovered by a PhD student who was looking for a subject in her home town of Halifax, so she would not need to travel too much. She was reading the letters of Anne Lister, and then (as she put it) the librarian changed the next decade of her life with seven words: “Did you know she had a diary?”

The diary, which in total runs to five million words, was half in a code that Lister invented. The family had the key to the code, but had suppressed it these two hundred years, because what that coded stuff was about was super gay. It is charming, and it is also sad.

The charming part is how she keeps falling in love with everyone. Here she is when a woman responds to her complimenting her bonnet:

“She seemed pleased, saying she thought I did not notice such things as these. I said no, not in general. Some people might have sacks about their heads & I not know, but there were some whose ribands I could count over the last seven years.”

She is also constantly swearing off love. Just like people centuries later, she keeps being “determined to devote myself soley to study,” and then not three days later falling in love again. The sad part is that she is actually in a long distance committed relationship with a woman called Mariana. It’s long distance, because at the time of the diaries, Mariana has gotten married (for the money) but this does not stop the women from considering themselves a couple. To give you a sense of all what goes on, let me just say Mariana gives Anne an STD (called ‘the whites’) which Anne then gives to her hookup Isabella (who btw is a bottle-of-wine-a-day drinker). There’s a lot of ‘treating’ herself by injecting herself with pepper.

One also learns a lot about the eighteenth century, not least how horrible the food is. Try this sample: “My aunt’s bowels being far from well, & myself very bilious, we had minced veal (white) & a light batter pudding with a lump of preserved apricot on top”

Probably what I most liked about the book is the intimacy. She really tells you her truth. As she puts it: “What a comfort is this journal. I tell myself to myself & throw the burden on my book & feel relieved”

There are lots of moments when you feel her touching you across time. Like this one: “They are clearing my room that I am sitting alone in the drawing-room . . . I feel rather low. I must turn my mind into another train of thought.”

She had ambition to be a writer, but unfortunately died of a fever while on holiday in Russia at 50. Strange to think she has achieved a certain kind of fame anyway. I’ll try and stop now, because this woman’s life was very interesting. I recommend you wikipedia her, I haven’t even got into her first love who was a mixed race girl who ended up in an insane asylum, or the scraping her teeth with a pen knife for a half hour at at time, or the non-binaryness, or the electrifying machine experimentation –

DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather

This is Cather’s alleged masterpiece. I am a huge fan of the much less famous MY ANTONIA, so thought I would give it a try. I can’t decide how I feel about it. Despite it being only about 250 pages, I kept almost giving up. Weeks later though, I am finding it has strangely stuck with me.

It tells about the struggles of two French priests, sent to Mexico (or New Mexico? I am not sure) in the late 1800s to manage an immense Catholic diocese. After the Spanish left, Catholicism managed to survive there on its own for multiple generations, without any additional reinforcement, developing its own rituals and apocrypha. I find it fascinating to see how the basic ideas of a religion are powerful enough across continents and centuries to keep people engaged, even if they only have a very short introduction to it. The priests were tasked with bringing this wild growing version of Catholicism back in line.

The book is a series of very short but very beautiful vignettes, moving back and forth in time from when the priests are young men, and decide to leave France for Mexico, through long mule rides across mountains, to building cathedrals, to rescuing women from abusive relationships, and finally on to death. It’s packed with incident and yet really I can’t tell you what I think it is about. I didn’t enjoy it, but perhaps I agree it is her masterpiece.

A HYMN TO LIFE by Gisele Pelicot

You probably read about this woman in the news. In her late 60s she found out that her husband had been sedating her and then inviting strangers over to rape her. (WHAT FOLLOWS IS ROUGH SO SKIP IT IF YOU NEED TO) This would have been terrible if it happened once. It happened 200 times. Even more horrifying was how he dealt with her ensuing health problems. You don’t get sedated that often without impact, and she struggled with long memory black outs, hair loss, etc. She thought she was going to die of a brain tumour like her mother, who died when she was 9. She also had dental problems, because she was orally raped so violently. This husband came with her to the doctors and specialists, acting concerned, all the while knowing exactly why she was so unwell.

This book is her account of finding out about what was happening, and the trial that followed. As shocking as what happened was, I found it even more shocking to see how she responded. This lady is just incredibly brave. She really struggled to watch the videos he made of all the rapes, but once she did, she realized she needed to go public. She wanted it clear that she was not ashamed to be in these videos; the perpetrators ought to be. Sounds basic, but the courage to do it is just incredible. She is a pretty ordinary lady, not a big feminist, left school at 15 etc, and I did think how proud the feminist movement should be, that she felt ready to step up into that experience.

One other thing I admired was her courage in accepting that she never knew her husband of fifty years. Imagine how difficult it would be to feel a huge chunk of you life was a lie. I’m amazed she is still standing.

YESTERYEAR by Caro Claire Burke

I can’t believe this is this author’s debut! First off, she came up with an amazing concept, being basically: tradwife goes back in time. Then, even more gallingly, she really hit the execution of the concept out of the ballpark. I won’t give away too much, because it has a fun twist, so let me just quote extensively as I like to do with books I like:

On her brother-in-law: “A pimple-faced corn dog of a young man with a bad temper”

On her husband, a rather sad figure who she forces into what she thinks his gender role should be: “he still wore his masculinity so roughly and unnaturally, as if it were an ill-fitting sweater I’d forced over his head”

And then best of all:

“Natalie’s like a border collie,” my mother used to say to the other women at church. “She needs a project, otherwise she starts chewing the cabinet corners.”

“Are you saying my son is a project?” I imagined (my father-in-law) saying.

“No,” I imagined my mother replying. “I’m saying he’s the cabinet corner.”

COLD WATER by Gwendoline Riley

Honestly I wish they would just start a new category in bookselling next to THRILLERS and WOMENS FICTION and whatever which is called LISTLESS NARRATORS, because then I could know what to avoid.

Typically I love Gwendoline Riley. I was completely crazy about MY PHANTOMS. She had a new book come out, and as I am too cheap to buy it in hard cover, the algorithm suggested I try one of her others. COLD WATER is her first, and god, even though it is only 200 pages, I barely got through it.

It tells about some girl who works at a bar, and also mostly hangs out at bars in her free time. So it’s a lot of listlessly going from one bar to another. I couldn’t care less. I love Riley so much I can only assume I must be missing something.

THE STRANGER BESIDE ME by Ann Rule

Here is a story about a woman who is contracted to write a book about the police’s search for a serial killer, and ends up finding out that she is in fact friends with the serial killer. Astoundingly, this is non-fiction.

The serial killer starts off killing individual women, first by sneaking into their homes, and then by snatching them off the street. Then he starts to beserk, and in a single day abducts one woman and then a few hours later another one, from a busy park. He rapes and murders them both that day. This is a breakthrough, because he approaches many women that day so they get a name, and make of vehicle. That name is Ted and that car is a bronze VW bug.

Now this author, who is closely following the case, she volunteers at the Samaritans. There she has a friend, a caring young man named Ted, who owns a bronze VW. So confident is she that it cannot be him, that she does not even report him.

To cut a long story short indeed he is Ted Bundy, the famous serial killer. He was such a convincing sociopath that not only did he trick her, but also his jailers – he escaped TWICE. Most importantly though he tricked multiple women. His schtick was to pretend to have a broken arm, and need help putting something in the car, or to pretend to be the police, so LADIES let us be reminded: BE ON YOUR GUARD, EVEN FROM THE APPARENTLY SAFE ONES.

HALF HIS AGE by Jeanette McCurdy

I loved McCurdy’s memoir I’M GLAD MY MOM’S DEAD, so I thought I would give her fiction a whirl. It wasn’t for me as good as her memoir, but I still enjoyed it. She’s a sharp writer of uncomfortable topics.

In this novel, a seventeen year old girl pursues her English teacher. He does not put up much of a fight. They have lots of very explicit sex. You will not be amazed to learn she does not have a very stable home life. She gets very fixated on him, and eventually demands he leaves his wife. I was surprised to feel rather sorry for him. Here he is on how teaching is not his dream:

I wanted to be a writer. A novelist. But I couldn’t handle the lack of security required to be one. I couldn’t tolerate the fluctuating, inconsequential strings of income. The consistent rejection. The scrutiny of my parent’s friends . . The uncertainty. I chose being able to afford take-out from the Thai place on the corner over roughing it, living off ramen noodles. I chose going to the game with the guys over submitting my short stories to publicatins. I chose catching up on my favourite TV show over finishing a draft. I chose comfort over betting on myself.’

He leaves his wife for her, and once she has him she does not want him any more.

MELINA RORKE told by herself

My family owns an amazing set of old books about Zimbabwe, and I read a few whenever I am home. Here’s another one. It is an autobiography and tells about a crazy life. I think some of it may be a bit made up, but even if we take off like 50% it’s still crazy.

She is in a convent school in South Africa at fifteen when she meets a man at the rugby. She has a cup of tea with him, he proposes, and she ACCEPTS. She runs away and marries him – HE IS 23! She is so young that he has to explain to her what is going on when she gets her period. She almost immediately gets pregnant. Her husband dies in a rugby match. Her family takes her back in and she has a dreadful birth. Her breasts are so full and painful that she volunteers to feeds babies other than her own, and when there are no more babies to feed FEEDS PUPPIES.

She moves to Bulawayo when it is just a few shacks, and eventually becomes a nurse, receiving an award for her work during the Boer War. She is then swept up in what we would today call the first Chimurenga.

Autobiographies are almost a mix of fact and fiction and I understand from the internet that this one leans a little heavily in the second direction. Apparently the husband did not die but in fact abandoned her for western Australia. I can see where you would need to lie about this in the late nineteenth century. But why would you put in the puppies unless it is true?! The Bulawayo bits and the nursing bits are true. I have my doubts about the midnight escape from Lobengula’s forces. But still damn, if its only 50% fact, what a life!

STAY UP WITH HUGO BEST by Erin Somers

It is never a good idea to like a book so much that you immediately buy another one by the same author. It never works out. I know this, but oh well. This author wrote THE TEN YEAR AFFAIR, which I very much liked, and being desperate and on vacation I decided to read her other book, her first, STAY UP WITH HUGO BEST.

I am utterly, utterly confused by the morality of this book. It tells about a 30 year old aspiring comedian who is trapped doing a menial receptionist job at the late night talk show of an older comedian she very much admires. The show gets cancelled, and he invites her to spend the weekend at his home. Creepily, she agrees; but she seems weirdly checked out from the whole experience. Like, if you are going to sleep your way to the top, at least being enthusiastically trying to get to the top. Or agonise about it. Or do something. I really can’t stand these books where the protagonist does not care about their own life. At the end she has generally transactional sex with the old guy, and he says: “was it everything you dreamed of?” Maybe I’m naïve but it was gross. I think I’d rather be naïve than whatever this is.

However it did have fun parts. How is this:

I watched a young woman shelve cough syrup for a while. She seemed calm, sapced out, like she was on the cough syrup herself. It was the same look I’d seen on the face of the shopgirl the night before. Boredom so total it delivered you to the astral plane. I knew the feeling from my agent’s assistant days, my audience page days, my receptionist days. You could function in that zone. Answer the phone or take an inventory of the supply closet . . . Meanwhile your brain made the connecting sound of the early internet and played a video of a dog you’d never laid eyes on running through a field.

God this takes me back to temping!

LILIANA’S INVINCIBLE SUMMER by Cristina Rivera Garza

This book is sub-titled ‘A Sister’s Search for Justice,’ and I’ll tell you right now she does not find it. Her sister was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in the 1990s, and the Mexican state has made approximately zero headway in finding him. In any case, I do not think that is what this book is about and I suspect it was sub-titled by the Marketing Dept. What it really is, is the author with the distance of thirty years trying to re-create the last summer of her sister’s life.

She goes through her letters and diaries, and she interviews her friends. It is extremely beautiful, a close reconstruction of few months in the life of an ordinary university student thirty years ago. In fact she focuses very little on the murderer. I did note though how the relationship had all the hallmarks of domestic violence (suicide threats, stalking, etc); but I guess in the ‘90s no one had the language/structures to identify that . No one helped her; she did not seem to think she needed help. I hope now the culture would do better at identifying early that she was in a dangerous pattern. In any case, it’s too late now. I found this epigraph very beautiful.

“They, like us, are alive in

hydrogen, in oxygen; in carbon,

in phosphrous, and iron; in sodium and chlorine”

(Christina Sharpe)

She won the Pulitzer. It’s a lovely tribute. She feels guilty it took her thirty years to do it, but I admire her courage; I can’t imagine opening those letters, even with many more years distance.