Confession Time 2: Guilty Pleasures Edition

What’s that Grace? You were hideously unorganised this week and left everything to the last minute AGAIN, and now have less than an hour to write a blog post? How unusual. That’s not like you at all. Yes, I know leaving things to the last minute is how Caitlin Moran does it, but she’s cleverer than you and has much better hair. Let’s just get on with it, shall we?

Reader, we are gathered here today to talk about guilty pleasures. Or rather, one guilty pleasure in particular. I actually don’t have many. If I like something I tend to own it, get very excited about it, and go on about it endlessly until my girlfriend’s eyes glaze over. This happens quite a lot. But as a book seller, literature graduate, and literary fiction fan, this particular one is something that I tend not to talk about. I buy these books on my kindle and read them furtively on buses when no one is looking. My guilty pleasure is 1950’s lesbian pulp fiction. Specifically the work of Ann Bannon, lesbian pulp queen and all round awesome lady. The writing is bad (in a good way), the plots are melodramatic, and there is lots of sex and smouldering eye contact, and I absolutely Eat. That. Shit. Up.

Now, if I were being literary and pretentious, I could try to defend my love of lesbian pulp. I could say that historically they’re really interesting, providing an insight into the position of lesbians in post-war America at a time when being homosexual was still illegal, heavily stigmatised, and undoubtedly dangerous. It gives us a window into these women’s lives, the way in which they viewed themselves and their relationships. They are a piece of homosexual history. And yeah, this is all true, and very important, and yada yada yada. But we all know the real reason that dykes like me (and a large audience of straight men, for that matter) LOVE these books, even back when they had to be read super furtively and hidden under mattresses. Because they are FUN. I love Laura Landon and her unstable, tempestuous, and (later) abusive relationship with Beebo Brinker (get a load of that alliteration, guys). As someone who was just coming out at university, I loved reading about American college students falling in love with a sorority sister, the will-they-won’t-they of their relationship made even more tense by the social stigma and the risk of being expelled from school. They are great fun and my immediate go to if I want something that doesn’t require any kind of thought. Complicated, they are not, but interesting? Absolutely.

Because it’s true. They are a piece of history. The way in which homosexuality is talked about as something you can learn, something that is conditioned, but becomes inherent and impossible to change, is a far cry from the “Born This Way” attitude of many 21^st century homosexuals. Laura’s close, almost idyllic, friendship with homosexual Jack provides comfort to him when male homosexuality is shown to always end in heartbreak: though homosexuality is not seen as an illness, the relationships are seen as less enduring than heterosexual love. It blights the life of Bannon’s characters, leaving them drinking heavily, alone, once they reach middle age and younger lovers lose interest. In true pulp fashion, passion can drive people to madness, and a definite feeling of violence boils just under the surface of much of Bannon’s work. It can be dark. It’s not all sex and sunshine and rainbows. But it’s not all negative, either. Homosexual love is portrayed as real, homosexuality is not seen as a disease, and very progressive ideas such as interracial relationships and homosexual parenting are addressed in the later books.

But let’s face it. We’re not really here for the history. We’re here for the smouldering eye contact, smoking butches, and the sex. So go fourth, faithful reader. Give Ann Bannon a go. For history. For science.

(and for lesbians)

The Grace Booker Prize: And the Winner is…

Ah, reader, it’s finally here. The day you have all been waiting for. I know you are SUPER excited. You’ve had this in your diary for weeks, you’ve been checking back anxiously all day to see if it’s up yet, you are all on the edge of your seats. I expect you’ve been all aflutter. It’s understandable (you can’t see, but I’m nodding my head sagely) for today, I announce the winner of the landmark literary event that is the Grace Booker Prize: my number one fiction book of the year so far. I shan’t keep it from you any longer.

And the winner is…

*drumroll*

Asylum – Patrick McGrath

*applause, squealing, sounds of general excitement*

Yes! Ladies and gentlemen, my favourite fiction read of the year thus far is Asylum, a gothic and twisted story about the wife of a doctor at a mental institution who embarks on an affair with a long term patient. It is a wonderful book, brilliantly atmospheric and tense, that haunts you long after you’ve finished it. There’s also a pretty good film adaptation starring everyone’s favourite guy Gandalf *ahem* I mean, Ian McKellen. But the book is better. Obviously.

But Grace! I hear you cry. This is a feminist book blog! You only ever talk about books by women, who is this male infiltrator? I know, reader, I know. Looking back through my book journals I realised that I rarely read books by men. It’s not intentional, honest, it just usually turns out that way. Put it down to me being a man hater who always sides with the women on Come Dine with Me. But trust me, this book is a corker. Its portrayal of the position of women in 1950s Britain and the way that the mental health system was used to uphold patriarchal expectations of “natural” female behaviour (chastity, maternity, a love of cooking, all that shit) is absolutely fascinating, and would make an interesting comparison with The Bell Jar if I ever have the time/motivation/caffeine supply necessary to write it. So you can read this one without risking your feminist lit fan street cred (and I won’t tell them about the 10 year anniversary addition of Twilight you’ve got under the desk because WE ALL KNOW YOU’RE GONNA READ IT). The writing is fantastic, the story is gripping, the interplay between man/woman and patient/doctor roles gets all mixed up and turned around, and the narrator is so wonderfully creepy I can guarantee you will love it. If you love dark, twisted stories where everything goes wrong, that is. Mills and Boon this is not.

A big congratulations to the ACTUAL real life Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. The novel is also up for the Green Carnation Prize 2015, so best of luck to him.

Phew, all that excitement has quite exhausted me. Someone put the kettle on, I am in desperate need of tea.

Image via Google Books

Reflections on Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison by Piper Kerman

Last night (or more accurately *ahem* early this morning) I finished Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, the memoir by the now notorious Piper Kerman, a middle class white woman who was incarcerated for smuggling a suitcase of drug money for her girlfriend ten years after the offence took place. Like many people, I was first introduced to Kerman’s story through the Netflix series of the same name, which I absolutely love, so when I saw the book during a trip to my local library (USE YOUR LIBRARIES, PEOPLE) I immediately picked it up. For those of you who are familiar with both the book and the show, you can imagine my surprise. Where the series is a complex ensemble drama about the entangled lives of a group of incarcerated women, Kerman’s memoir is a story of class inequality, a prison system that is ineffectual and unfeeling, and the amazing perseverance and solidarity of the women caught in the middle of it all.

At first, Kerman reminded me rather of Elizabeth Wurtzel. Also a blonde, middle class, American woman, Wurtzel rose to fame in 1994 after publishing her memoir Prozac Nation, chronicling her battle with depression in a way that read to many, including myself, as rather whiny and narcissistic. Now, I actually ended up quite enjoying Prozac Nation (which probably warrants a blog post all of its own), but for most of the book I was deeply annoyed by Wurtzel, and when I first began Orange is the New Black, I was concerned that Kerman was so wrapped up in how dreadful it was that the life of this ‘nice white lady’ had been destroyed (by her own actions, no less) that, as with Wurtzel, this self-pity would overshadow anything else in the novel. I am very glad to say that this is not the case. Although Kerman was, understandably, devastated that she was being sent to prison, what rapidly became apparent is that she is painfully aware of her own privilege compared to many of the women she was incarcerated with. She had a wonderful support network of dedicated friends and family on the outside, a reliable stream of money to buy her own goods (such as toiletries and actually edible food) from the commissary, a job and a home waiting for her when she was released, a fiancé who stood by her and visited every single week, and the money to employ a good lawyer in the first instance, meaning her sentence was significantly shorter than that of many women imprisoned for similar crimes. Also, she was white, educated, and engaged to a nice middle-class man. She is continuously questioned how a woman like her ended up in prison in the first place.

The inequality is what is really at the heart of this book: Kerman is rightfully outraged at the way in which ‘we have built revolving doors between our poorest communities and correctional facilities’, and that prison spectacularly fails at teaching these women the skills they need to break into mainstream society, when criminal and underground markets are all many of them have ever known. Daughters are imprisoned in the same institution to which their mothers were sent before them, often with sisters or cousins in similar facilities. And the revolving door turns.

Another thing that Kerman highlighted is the solidarity, love, and perseverance that the women in these institutions display. They make gifts for each other, celebrate together, comfort one another. They form their own families, their own support groups, and far from being a danger, Kerman portrays her fellow inmates as a constant source of love and sisterhood. It’s a far cry from the accepted narrative that your fellow prisoners will be the largest danger you will face in prison: the danger to these women comes from incompetent or bullying correctional officers (or COs), and from being caught in cycles of poverty, addiction, and poor education that prison does very little to rectify.

But where is Alex, I hear you cry! Where are the lesbians? Well, reader, I spent the whole book saying the same thing. I waited with baited breath for the moment when Nora, Alex’s real life counterpart, would come strutting into Danbury and sweep Piper off her feet. But, alas, it was not to be. Nora does make another appearance, but there is no affair, and there is certainly no sweeping. If you want gay ladies, I would stick with Sarah Waters. The lesbianism in this novel is there: Kerman is frank about the nature of her relationship with Nora, and there are several openly lesbian woman in the the prison, but there is no sex, and it is all handled in a very matter of fact manner, with no sensationalism or gratuitous sapphic dabbling. I was only a little disappointed. All in all, I found this an interesting and enjoyable read, more in the line of Girl, Interrupted than Cell Block H. If you want an educated exploration of the pitfalls of the US prison system and the women trying to overcome it, then definitely give it a go. Kerman’s narrative is amusing, warm, and nowhere near as irritating and self-involved as Piper Chapman can be. However, if you were looking for a Piper x Alex fix to fill the void after the end of OITNB season 3, you may just have to sit tight and wait for season 4.

Image via Piper Kerman

The Grace Booker Prize Shortlist: My Top 6 Reads of 2015 (so far!)

This week the Man Booker Prize for fiction shortlist was released. For those of you who have been living under a literary rock, the prize is awarded every year to the best original novel written in the English language, and for the last two years it has been opened up to writers from all over the world, so competition is tough. A big congratulations to this year’s finalists, but I think it’s time I introduce a far more exciting award into the literary calender. I am pleased to announce the Grace Booker Prize: where I choose my best book of the year and award the writer the glory of knowing that I have enjoyed their book more than anyone else’s. If I had their address I could send chocolate, but Caitlin Moran has issued me with a restraining order so that could be awkward. Where was I? Oh yes. So without further ado, my top six books of the year (so far!) are:

The Talented Mr Ripley – Patricia Highsmith

A wonderful book from the queen of suspense, The Talented Mr Ripley is the first book of Highsmith’s famous Ripley series. A brilliant read that keeps you hooked, desperate to know what Ripley will do next, and if he will get away with it all.

Asylum – Patrick McGrath

A dark read from gothic penman Patrick McGrath, Asylum is the story of an affair that goes horribly wrong. Obsessive lovers, deception, and unreliable narrators galore, this is a fantastic read that grips and chills until the very last page.

The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters

Made famous for her titillating debut Tipping the Velvet (which I LOVE), The Little Stranger is unusual for Waters in it’s lack of any obviously lesbian characters. However, don’t let that put you off. A country doctor is called to the house of one of the oldest families in the town, only to find that what is going on there may be more sinister than mere illness and hysteria. Water’s narrative style is a joy to read, as always, and the uncertainty and suspense makes this book a truly enthralling read.

The Custom of the Country – Edith Wharton

Published in 1913, this is the oldest novel on this list, but in many ways the most interesting. Wharton paints a fascinating, if jaded, picture of interwar America, where divorce, money grabbing, and greed is the norm, old social structures are falling, and nothing is sacred. The wonderfully named Undine Spragg is the anti-heroine we love to hate in this massively entertaining piece of social commentary.

The Cloning of Joanna May – Fay Weldon

I was lucky enough to hear Fay Weldon speak at The Chester Literature Festival while I was at university, and when asked which of her books was her favourite, this was the one she chose. Divorced socialite Joanna May was cloned without her knowledge thirty years ago during what she believed to be an abortion. Now, left by her controlling husband after an affair, the past catches up with her in this fascinating examination of the place of women in society, nature vs. nurture.

How To Build A Girl – Caitlin Moran

Oh Caitlin, how I adore you, with your DM boots and your black hair flying gracefully in the wind. I won’t recap this one, as I reviewed it a few weeks back which, if you are so inclined, you can read here. When you’re done with that, go see Half Girl Half Teacup’s awesome post, The C-Word, on why Caitlin Moran is the most awesome woman ever.

Now, none of these books were published this year, I know. Turns out, it’s September and I have yet to read one (ONE!) book published in 2015. Better get a move on! I will announce my winner the week of 13^th of October, same as the actual prize, so check back then to see my top read of the year so far. I know you are all on the edge of your seats.

Review: The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson

Publisher: Random House
Year: 2012
ISBN: 978-0-09-956183-5
No. of Pages: 224 

‘”I have sold my soul,” she said. “I have signed in blood.”’

As a literature loving Pagan lesbian (try saying that when you’re pissed), you can imagine how excited I was to stumble across The Daylight Gate. This novella is the latest offering from Jeanette Winterson and is a fictional account of the days leading up to the infamous Pendle Witch Trials, published in 2012 to commemorate the 400 year anniversary of the executions. Many, myself included, know the story of the little girl who testified against her own family and her neighbours, sending them all to the gallows for witchcraft, but Winterson’s take is a chilling retelling of political agendas, personal vendettas, and demonic pacts where it’s not just your life at stake, but your soul.

Jeanette Winterson, OBE, was born in Manchester but raised in Lancashire, where The Daylight Gate is based. She rose to fame with her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, in 1985, and has continued to enthral readers with her subsequent novels exploring themes of physicality, sexuality, and gender identity. Despite the prevalence of queer themes in her work, Winterson is not confined to the category of “lesbian writer” and has achieved popular recognition, winning several prizes including the Whitbread Prize for a first novel, the E. M. Forster award, and two Lambda Literary Awards, as well as her OBE for services to literature.

Winterson’s historical fiction is always interesting. As in her 1987 novel The Passion, Winterson is free and easy with historical accuracy in this novella, using the history as a setting, a background against which her characters stand. Winterson herself said that ‘The Passion isn’t an historical novel. It uses history as an invented space. The Passion is set in a world where the miraculous and the everyday collide’, and in many ways The Daylight Gate is the same. The characters are real historical figures, but Winterson has made them her own. She takes the accusations of devil worship and witchcraft levied at these women and uses it as fact, introducing a level of supernatural horror in addition to the gruesome physical abuse these women are seen to endure: rape, torture, and state sanctioned murder. However, the way that Winterson does this makes for an interesting and in many ways disappointing power dynamic in this novel. Contrary to witchcraft providing women with power and agency of their own, it is shown over the course of the story to be something that is bestowed on women by men (or male appearing characters. Whether or not they can be men if not human is up for debate). It’s hard to say much on the subject without huge plot spoilers, but the portrayal of women as the agents of male power was somewhat disappointing, especially considering the increasingly feminist (if occasionally trashy) portrayal of witches in recent years. However, I did love the division between the ceremonial magic and alchemy practised by Dr Dee and the folk magic of the Device family, and it isn’t at all true to say that the women of this novel aren’t powerful. However, it is Alice Nutter’s money that allows her her agency, not her knowledge of alchemy. And, of course, her fierce intelligence.

But really these criticisms are mere pet peeves: considering the setting, it’s amazing these women have any power at all. When it comes to how enjoyable the novel is to read, Winterson is brilliant as ever. Although I confess to being slightly disappointed with the very end of Christopher Southworth’s story, Alice Nutter’s was wonderful, and I ripped through this novella, finding it just as gripping as Winterson’s previous work. As always, Winterson’s prose was absolutely gorgeous: the short, blunt sentences highlighting the brutality of what is being described, and the storyline that emerges about Alice Nutter and the beautiful Elizabeth Southern was brilliantly handled. Winterson always handles queer sexuality without being heavy handed, and presents human relationships as fluid and natural. Her queer characters never feel tokenistic or gimmicky. She brilliantly captures the political climate of 1612 Lancashire: the paranoia and fear of the establishment, as well as a politician’s self-serving desire to get ahead, is encapsulated in Potts and his determination to both capture Southworth and expose the Pendle women as witches, whatever the cost. The Daylight Gate is a hugely enjoyable book, at times genuinely chilling, and a definite read for any one who, just as dusk is falling, feels they could believe in magic.

5 Lessons I Learned from Angela Carter

Angela Carter is a writer who tends to elicit strong responses from people. In my experience, she is literary Marmite: you either love her books with a burning passion, or you hate her writing and think that she should never have been allowed near a typewriter for the sanity of readers everywhere. However, when I picked up a copy of The Magic Toyshop at the tender age of 15, it started a love affair that has lasted my whole reading life to date, and Carter is nothing if not a fountain of (slightly… specialist) wisdom. So here are five lessons that I have learned from Angela Carter:

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There are few problems in life that can’t be solved with the strategic use of sex

Sex is never just sex in a Carter novel: it is the most powerful weapon known to man, and it is often used accordingly. When it comes to getting what you want, whether that’s not being eaten by a wolf or attempting to force your niece to act in a play, in a book by Carter sex is generally the way to go about it.

Men are fundamentally beasts (but women love them anyway)

Men are animals in Carter novels. Sometimes literally. Okay, so they might have their bright moments, their scarily clever manipulative bastard moments, but they are slaves to their… baser urges. However, Carter’s women seem to recognise this and accept it, even like it, becoming a bit animal themselves in the process (‘The Tiger’s Bride’, anyone?). Carter’s romantic relationships are never straightforward and are often as multi-faceted and twisted as the characters themselves, but her men are always a bit on the beastly side.

If things first appear to be freaky and weird, you can safely assume they will turn out to be 15 times worse.

Carter has a talent for presenting you with a weird, twisted situation… and making it so much worse than you could have imagined before the book is out. Hidden bodies, incestuous siblings, literal and figurative monsters, men who are ‘hairy on the inside’: nothing is off limits. What we as readers can take away from this is if it looks bad at the outset, then turn tail and run, girl. Turn tail and run.

Just because a girl is young does not mean she isn’t fierce

Many a man has come to a sticky (ahem) end in a Carter novel for underestimating the strength and sometimes just downright duplicity of a teenage girl. Just because a girl’s young doesn’t mean you can just walk all over her, and even if you appear to be getting what you want, I’d watch out for what she’s doing when your back is turned…

‘If in doubt, freak ’em out’

Okay, okay, this isn’t actually Angela Carter, it’s Sharon Needles, but the same still applies. When you are looking at your short story the length of an A4 page and thinking ‘is necrophilia, incest, sadomasochism AND peadophelia too much?’ take Angela’s word for it that no, no it is not. Carter never shied away from using good old shock factor in her work, and it is all the better for it. There is something about the imagery of a cigar as ‘fat as a baby’s arm’ that just sticks. Trust me, you will traumatise A Level English students everywhere, but there will be at least one 16 year old girl in that class that will love you for it. The rest of them are weak.

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So that’s it! Five lessons I have taken away from Carter novels. Take these words of wisdom and take them out into the world, but I accept no responsibility for any wolf men harmed in the process…

Review: How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Year: 2014
ISBN: 978-0-091949-00-6
No. of Pages: 340

‘There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager, slowly urging you towards the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and you will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone’ – How to Build a Girl, Cailtin Moran.

Words cannot express the depth of my love for Caitlin Moran. I’m rather a late comer to the Moran party, only having read her 2011 bestselling book How to Be a Woman about a month ago, and picking up How to Build a Girl immediately after while binge watching Raised by Wolves, the Channel 4 show co-written by Moran and her sister. I actually would not recommend this level of immersion in all things Caitlin, I’m not convinced it’s healthy, but even filling my every waking moment for about two weeks with most of her recent output has not killed what can only be described as an obsessional love for this woman.

Moran is certainly an impressive figure. Home educated on a Wolverhampton council estate, she published her first novel for children at the age of 16, and by 18 was a regular columnist for The Times, where she still writes three columns a week. She has won multiple awards for her novels and journalism, including the Galaxy National Book Award Book of the Year for How to Be a Woman, and was named Columnist of the Year by the London Press Club in 2012. How to Build a Girl is her first work of adult fiction, published in 2014, and is the first of a planned trilogy.

The novel follows fourteen year old Johanna Morrigan, living in a council house in Wolverhampton with her alcoholic father, depressed mother, and four siblings, surviving only on disabled benefit and bolognese that consists mostly of peas. The first half of the novel is a very believable and beautifully observed portrait of life for a working class British teenager, as Johanna tries to find money to help her family while discovering who she is, and trying to transform herself into someone she wants to be. The novel, although fiction, is known to be semi-autobiographical, and here is where I personally feel it falls down slightly. While I still found it hugely enjoyable, I could see the strong parallels with anecdotes described by Moran in How to Be a Woman, and it took me slightly longer than I would have expected to read the first half of this book. I felt that I’d read quite a lot of it before. However, by the second half I was firmly under Moran’s spell again, deeply impressed with how the novel manages to be didactic without being heavy-handed, and totally, totally in love with the moments where Moran’s own poetic use of language shines through Johanna’s colloquial narrative:

And later, over a glass of wine – because you drink
wine now, because you are grown – you will marvel
over what you did. Marvel that, at the time, you kept
so many secrets. Tried to keep the secret of yourself.
[…] When really, you were about as secret as the moon.
And as luminous, under all those clothes.

What really resonates throughout this whole book is love. The adult Johanna narrating the novel has an obvious and overwhelming love and respect for her younger self and has forgiven her for her mistakes, recognising that these rites of passage, such as getting nervous and talking like Elvis and taking ‘really rough speed’, are all part of building a girl. You take these experiences and you build the adult that you are to become. How to Build a Girl is not only a brilliantly written and entertaining novel, it is an incredibly positive one. Moran has created a portrait of a girl in Johanna that is not only believable but affirming. You can see the beauty in stupidity, the importance of every step in the process of becoming. In looking back and seeing her younger self, the socially awkward compulsive masturbator, as beautiful, adult Johanna allows us all to do the same. Caitlin Moran is definitely one to watch, and I eagerly await the next chapter in Johanna’s story.

Why You Should Read: Andrea Gibson

‘I want everything you have ever tried to wash away’
– ‘Emergency Contact’, Andrea Gibson

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I first heard of Andrea Gibson in my last year of uni. I was sitting in my mate’s living room at 2 in the morning, pissed and eating Doritos, having bumped into her and a mutual friend outside the student’s union a few hours before. As I have FABULOUS friends, conversation soon turned to poetry, feminism, and gay rights, and our friend mentioned a favourite poem on gay marriage, ‘I Do’ by Andrea Gibson. Literary minded lesbian that I am, the friend assumed that I’d have heard of her, and was scandalised to find that I’d never read anything Gibson had written, or seen any of her (numerous) performance videos on Youtube. Half an hour later, we had decamped to the living room of my mate’s dorm where, after removing our bras (and genuinely having to talk our friend out of burning hers and/or throwing it in the canal near our campus), she got her laptop out and showed me ‘Maybe I Need You’, one of the most beautiful bits of performance poetry I have ever seen. I am still very proud of Drunk Grace for not crying.

Andrea Gibson is an American queer activist and performance poet who writes on a variety of topics very close to my little queermo heart, including gender presentation, homophobia, mental health, love, sex, and dogs. I especially love her poem about dogs. She writes beautifully on human relationships, and her love poems are some of the most brutally honest, gorgeous, and painful bits of writing I have ever read. Her power comes from vulnerability. She is not afraid to bleed in twelve-point font, every insecurity, fear, messy break-up in ink for all the world to read. I was lucky enough to see her perform at The Deaf Institute in Manchester this year, and her words are even more powerful in person. Although she works on the page, she is definitely a poet whose work is most effective when heard out loud, spoken by a visibly nervous yet compelling Gibson who holds the room’s attention without seemingly having to try. I left the gig more than a little in love with her, hugging my signed copy of Pansy the whole way home.

With six albums and two full length collections of poetry available, not to mention the myriad of videos on Youtube, Andrea Gibson has plenty of material available for anyone who wants to check her out. But keep a box of tissues handy. You’ll thank me later.

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Visit Andrea Gibson at her website or check out this awesome performance on Youtube.

We Aim to Misbehave: A Reading List for my Fourteen-Year-Old Self

It is a truth universally acknowledged that being a teenager is hard. There is no denying it. Hormones mean you cry at least fifteen times a day, your hair won’t do what you tell it to, and your dad really does not understand how important it is that you go out on Tuesday because literally EVERYONE IN THE WORLD is going, and Laura’s mum doesn’t care that it’s a school night. But these turbulent few years change the way you view the world and, most importantly, yourself. In a world where the media is constantly bombarding teenagers with unrealistic beauty standards, and social media means that school follows you home, the media that you choose to consume has taken on unprecedented significance. Books can educate. Books can change you. So here is a reading list for my tear stained, heavily eye-linered, fourteen-year-old self, or any teenage girl, in fact. Because who wants to read about the new fad diet when you can have feminism, lesbianism, and angst instead?

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Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution – Sara Marcus

Every teenage girl needs Riot Grrrl. It was a movement that revolutionised the US punk scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s, a rad fem uprising reclaiming space from the boys who had dominated the scene of the time, banishing women to the sidelines. Marcus’s book is an exploration of the women behind the movement and the impact that it had, a must read for any angry, creative teenager who’s ever felt that rock was an all boy club.

The Magic Toyshop – Angela Carter

Although not for the faint of heart, Angela Carter is one of my favourite writers, and this coming of age story is a must read for any teenage girl. When Melanie’s parents are killed in a plane accident, she and her siblings are sent to live with their tyrannical Uncle Philip in his toy shop in South London. Although the magical realist elements are strong here, the novel is really about Melanie’s process of self-discovery, finding herself capable of a strength and sexuality that she didn’t know she had.

Sugar Rush – Julie Birchill

Okay, okay, I admit, this is not the best written book in the universe but when tween Grace read this, it was revolutionary. Utterly. Mindblowing.

As a (now out and proud, then very closeted) lesbian who had a nasty habit of falling in love with school friends, this was what I needed to read. I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t sick. Hell, I wasn’t even the only one. I remember sitting on my bedroom floor, almost ten years ago now, devouring nearly the whole book in one sitting. Queer or not, this fun book captures something about being fifteen, and it has always stuck in my mind as something every teenager should read.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson

Sugar Rush’s far, far better written and at times utterly heart breaking older sister, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is one of my favourite books of all time. This semi-autobiographical account of a young lesbian discovering who she is in a strictly Christian town is described in gorgeous prose by Winterson, and is necessary reading for any teenager who feels like they don’t fit in.

How to Be A Woman – Caitlin Moran

Words cannot describe how much I love this book. Part memoir, part feminist rant, this book is a collection of witty and at times laugh-out-loud funny musings on what it takes to be a woman in the 21^st Century. From body hair to abortion no topic is off limits, and Moran gets her point across without seeming preachy or condescending. Debunking a lot of the pressure put on young women with the simple question ‘do the boys have to do it? No? Then don’t worry’, this book is a must read for teenage girls everywhere.

The Life and Loves of A She-Devil – Fay Weldon

A personal favourite, this ludicrously fun book is the story of a well-behaved woman who gets screwed over despite doing everything society told her and subsequently decides to thoroughly, thoroughly misbehave. Take note, teenage me. Take very detailed notes.

Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

Little Women seems a strange choice next to many of the others on this list. For one, the girls all seem relatively well-behaved, there is no big exposé of how removing your body hair is part of a patriarchal plot, and none of the characters are actually lesbians. Not even Jo. But, when it comes to sisterhood and female solidarity, this book has it down. The March women could teach the Corleone’s a thing about family. None of them ever tell a sister that she cannot do something: from Jo’s writing to Amy’s art, they are all extremely supportive. Also, and this is a biggie, Mrs March is determined that her girls marry for love, and not for money: their happiness as humans is more important to her than their economic value. And Jo is just amazing. I refuse to be told otherwise.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

Aside from being one of the most famous books in English literature, every teenage girl should read Pride and Prejudice because, actually, Elizabeth and her sister Jane are pretty kick ass. SURE, she marries the guy at the end, but that’s because she actually loves him: our Lizzie was more than willing to give up his £10,000 a year when she thought Darcy was a dick. We could all do with more witty and intelligent women in our literary lives, quite aside from the fact that the love and loyalty between Jane and Elizabeth is a lesson in sisterhood every young woman should remember.

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

I know, I know, hear me out. Who in their right mind would give a probably totally self-absorbed, introspective, and emotionally volatile teenager a copy of The Bell Jar? Answer: me. Esther Greenwood is every intelligent, creative young woman who is told by society that she can’t be these things and be attractive, something that’s just as prevalent now as it was in the 1950s. So what does she do? Shake her fist at the patriarchy and tell them all to go to hell while writing a fabulous novel? No. Unfortunately she has a breakdown. But in the process she calls out a lot of patriarchal bullshit, and does not compromise or dumb herself down to get society (a.k.a. boys) to like her. So yeah, I would give this (beautiful, gorgeous, devastating) novel to teenage me. You can do this, teenage me. But don’t touch those sleeping pills. They’re not good.