In the first musical number in the classic RKO comedy film "Swing Time", Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance with grace and finesse; towards the end of the number, they even leap across the fence-like borders which circle the floor. Hamish Hamilton - PRH, 2016 Astaire and Rogers
“There was virtually no aspect of twentieth-century defense technology that had not been touched by the hands and minds of female mathematicians.” HarperCollins, 2016 That might not come up in math class at school, but it's evident on every page of Hidden Figures. "What I wanted was for
It's not all "Reader, I married him" but plenty of contemporary novels are preoccupied by the idea of storytelling, and often one voice does speak to us directly even now. Periscope Books, 2016 In Tabish Khair's Just Another Jihadi Jane, the storyteller's direct address appears regularly and spiritedly.
"The past presses so hard on the present, the present is badly bruised, blood brims under the skin." These lines from Brenda Shaughnessy's poem “Nachträglichkeit”* fit beautifully with Darren Greer's new novel, Advocate: Not only because much of Advocate is preoccupied with memory, with what the characters carry with them
Reading Becoming Lin reminded me of discovering Marilyn French's The Women's Room and Marge Piercy's Small Changes. Two unapologetically feminist novels which I felt had poured out of my own heart into some other writer's story. I inhaled these books, and I felt the same sense of intense recognition and
