Oh my God, Carol is almost here and it looks AMAZING

“Everything comes full circle, and when it happens I want you to imagine me there to greet you.”

Before I say anything, before I even open my big fat mouth, look at this. LOOK AT IT.

Is that or is that not the most beautiful thing you have ever seen? Those costumes. Those colours. Cate Blanchett. A period drama with lesbians. I must have been super good this year, because Carol is gonna be one hell of a Christmas present. Forget James bloomin’ Bond, this is the highlight of cinema for 2015. Not even Suffragette got me this excited.

But Grace! You say. This is a book blog! Why do we care about some crappy movie? Because, reader, this film is an adaptation of one of my favourite books of all time. And unlike when they filmed Inkheart (WHY, BRENDAN FRASER, WHY!?) this adaptation looks like it’s going to be a good one. It’s already had some killer reviews (including this awesome one from Autostraddle, the leading authority on all things lesbian), and the teaser trailer is so beautiful I have watched it about 15 times and it still makes me well up.

I just watched it again. I don’t think I can wait another 5 weeks, my head may explode.

Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name, Carol is the story of Therese, a young woman working in a department store over Christmas, who meets an older woman, Carol, buying a gift for her daughter. The two strike up an affair, but Carol’s rapidly deteriorating marriage becomes an obstacle. It’s hard to say anything else without major plot spoilers, but Highsmith’s talent for keeping the reader uncomfortable really comes into play, here. The book has the feel of the thrillers Highsmith is best known for, constantly driving you forwards, while showing you a romance between two women who found each other against all odds. Published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan in 1952, The Price of Salt, as Carol was originally called, sold over a million copies but, despite sales, Highsmith didn’t reveal her association with the novel until late in life because of its homosexual content. When I read it a few weeks ago, I absolutely adored it. The imagery is beautiful, and it is so wonderfully tense it keeps you on the edge of your seat right up until the last page. The ending is an interesting one considering the time that the novel was written, and homosexuality is treated without any suggestion of perversion or negativity, unlike many of the 1950s lesbian pulp novels which were its contemporaries, the problems they face coming from larger society rather than from within the women themselves. Highsmith is such a talented writer, it was always going to be awesome, and with a cast and crew this good I can’t imagine the film could go far wrong. BUT, only time will tell! Go, read the book. Mentally and emotionally prepare yourselves. I am off to watch the trailer on repeat and weep over the beauty of Cate Blanchett’s hair.

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Carol is released in UK cinemas on the 27^th of November 2015.

In other news, no post for the next couple of weeks as I am off graduating (screams into the abyss). I will return soon with more ramblings about books / book related doings / things that I’m excited about.

Image via Empire Online

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

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.

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.