Links, almost #2
Your monthly reccs, reads, and the rest
Hello!
I’ve been in France this week, visiting my Dad. The first time I went to see him after he moved there was a couple of weeks after my first miscarriage. Dan and I had, at one time, expected we’d be breaking pregnancy news on that trip. Instead, we turned up in a grief-fog. I can’t remember now whether we’d even told anyone what had happened at that point, or whether it was all still a language-less haze, but I do remember queueing to board our flight home behind a woman with a tiny baby nestled on her chest. And in an unexpected moment of clarity, I thought: One day that will be me. One day I will bring my child here.
I don’t know that it was a determinedly hopeful thought, as such, I think it was more my brain trying to tell itself a story to take away the sting of being so close to someone else’s newborn. Â
It came to mind, as I walked through arrivals at Limoges airport this weekend, holding Edward’s hand. (Strictly speaking, the first time I took Edward to France was last year – but the flight had proved too stressful to leave any room for sentimentality…)
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this assortment of books, journalism, telly and other things I’ve loved this month.
Reading/watching/listening…
Wild Hope. I devoured this memoir hot off the press over the weekend. Feminist journalist Marisa Bate takes a trip, via Greyhound bus, across America’s Midwest, interviewing activists who are trying to make the world a fairer, safer place for women. But she’s also following in the footsteps of her mother, who made a similar journey aged 22 in 1974 – the year after Roe v Wade was passed. This book skilfully blends many different elements: a history of the struggle for abortion rights, bona fide reporting from the frontline in today’s battle for reproductive justice, reflections on how we keep going when the political tide feels against us, and also a more personal pilgrimage in search of family stories. In a world that sometimes feels it only has time for Insta-palatable feminism, this book is a call to arms; a reminder of what real action looks like – and just how much is at stake.
Assembly, by Natasha Brown. This sharp, compact novel does so much in fewer than 100 pages. The unnamed protagonist is about to attend a family party at her boyfriend’s grand childhood home. He is the scion of old-money politicos. She is a Black woman with a high-flying corporate job in a bank who is routinely wheeled out to give talks to girls schools and women’s panels because ‘the diversity must be seen’. A powerful critique of inequality, race, money, and class.
This Ragged Grace. Octavia Bright – co-host of one of my favourite podcasts Literary Friction – has written a rare and beautiful thing: a memoir about giving up drinking that isn’t a tell-all of the wretched things she did while drunk or a bland manifesto about the magic of sobriety. Bright very consciously didn’t want her story to ‘become a commodity, a silver coin in the confessional economy that thrives on tales of feminine dysfunction’. Instead, she’s written a study of recovery – exploring how we live and make peace with ourselves. It’s philosophical, poetic, and very moving, not least the sections about her father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s not long after she stopped drinking. (You can read an extract here).
Bad Summer People, by Emma Rosenblum. Set on a small Atlantic barrier island, as the super-rich ‘summer people’ descend from New York for the season, it opens with the discovery of a body. A little bit White Lotus, a little bit Desperate Housewives.
Confinement: The Hidden Histories of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain, by Jessica Cox – I’m reading this interesting study of pregnancy and childbirth at the moment as I’ll be chatting with Jessica about the chapter on miscarriage, stillbirth and child loss, for an Instagram Live next week – join us on Tuesday 4th July at 7.30pm.
Can I still listen to David Bowie? I enjoyed this extract from Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer – a book about navigating our love for art made by people who do bad things.
This, by Eva Wiseman, on how far our dreams have fallen.
Please, no more celebrity podcasts...
How to unpick perfectionism society’s favourite character ‘flaw’.
A brief history of the F-bomb, by lexicographer Susie Dent.
iPhone Notes – the window to our souls?
It’s been a year since Roe v Wade was over-turned. Time to revisit this powerful piece.Â
This is very moving, by the Guardian’s Helen Pidd, on deciding to stop IVF and finding unexpected solace in the childfree-by-choice community. Â
Inside the weird and frightening world of Trad wives.
‘The first time I forgot the anniversary of my son’s death’.
Poker Face. On Sky Max/Now TV, this is basically Murder She Wrote, but with HBO-level gloss, glorious Americana, and Natasha Lyonne being her charismatic self as a human lie-detector who solve crimes. Perfect telly. Â
This strange and beautiful A.S. Byatt short story (from 2003) – about a woman turning to stone.
Other joys….
Edward saying ‘bong-jerrr’ to anyone and everyone in France (and a few people at Leeds-Bradford airport for good measure). The first cosmos flowers. The first (tiny, still green) tomatoes. Ox-eye daisies. Dad’s roast chicken. White broderie anglaise dresses. Iced coffee. The smell of rain on hot earth – and knowing that there is a specific word for this.   Â