Tag: Book Review

  • Review: My Thoughts Exactly – Lily Allen

    Review: My Thoughts Exactly – Lily Allen

    I’ve always been a huge fan of Lily Allen’s music and I love an autobiography, so when I heard that she was writing one I was very excited. My Thoughts Exactly is an addictive read that doesn’t disappoint. I’ve always considered Allen to be a bit of a lyrical genius, but now she’s proved herself as a talented writer beyond the realm of music.

    As much as I wanted to savour My Thoughts Exactly, I whizzed through it because it’s so engaging and moving. Allen reveals her darkest moments, fesses up to her failings and raises awareness about a whole bunch of important issues.

    The book chronicles her life so far but not in a strictly chronological order. Always a controversial figure, the tabloid press has often had it in for Allen, so there are some events that you expect to read about, some that show just how wrong some of Allen’s critics appear to have been and others that you don’t see coming. Unsurprisingly, given the title, the stories are very much from her perspective, she doesn’t try to give other sides of the story because she can only give her version of events. From the off, she’s very open and honest about what you’re about to read.

    It’s not a particularly happy book, but I wasn’t expecting it to be. Tackling drug abuse, stalking, infidelity, assault, stillbirth, divorce and mental health, it’s a rough ride. Allen writes it all so vividly and honestly that you’ll often be angry at various people and things, including, but not limited to, Allen’s parents, the music industry, the police, the press and Lily Allen herself. She apologies for the racism in the satirical music video for Hard Out Here and says it was a result of her not paying attention to what was going on around her. Given her very intense personal life that seems entirely possible, but also, it isn’t really good enough, is it? She does, however, talk about how once she stopped being defensive about it she then became interested in intersectional feminism. Allen seems determined to learn from her mistakes but doesn’t deny them ever having happened.

    My Thoughts Exactly documents a lot of chaos. In fact, it’s not unlike the late, great Carrie Fisher’s autobiographies, it’s certainly written as well as them only with considerably less humour. It gets really dark at times, and you find yourself wincing through several chapters, but happily, it has a hopeful ending.

    Allen also departs from the big events to talk about some topics in broader terms, female sexuality is one of them — which of course caught my attention (#sexualityinculture)!  She discusses her struggle with orgasm and the lessons she had to learn to take her own pleasure seriously — it turns out that the song It’s Not Fair wasn’t written about one partner in particular but all sexual encounters in general. Even more relevant to this blog, she touches upon how trauma impacted her menstrual cycle and contraception. #Nevernotrelevant

    For fans of her music, it’s a must-read. One of my favourite things about Allen’s music is that it’s not all romantic love songs, she writes about the press and politics, siblings and parenthood, loss and feminism. All the backstories you’ve imagined from the lyrics and dodgy press coverage are set aside as you learn the real stories behind the songs. It doesn’t make them less relatable, instead, it allows her music to mean even more.

  • City by the Book: A Little Tour in France

    City by the Book: A Little Tour in France

    As soon as my friend and I planned this summer’s France trip I was excited to get back on it with the City by the Book blogs, and here we are! I thought it’d be easy to find books by authors from the cities we were visiting, or at least set there, but it was much harder than I expected. Especially once I was limited to e-books for the sake baggage allowances.

    And then I came across a non-fiction book by Henry James – A Little Tour in France. Well that was exactly what we were doing, so it sounded like a good fit. I knew it reached Toulouse, which was our first stop, but I hadn’t expected our second and third stops, Montpellier and Aix-en-Provence, to come up too. There wasn’t much Aix coverage, but the book was a great companion for Toulouse and Montpellier.

    Toulouse

    James, it seems, wasn’t overly impressed with Toulouse. I was, but after the rest of the trip, it certainly wasn’t the high point.

    “But the city, it must be confessed, is less pictorial than the word, in spite of Place du Capitole, in spite of quay of the Garonne, in spite of the curious cloister of the old museum.” – Henry James, A Little Tour in France.

    At present, Toulouse is a city under construction. Undoubtedly, it’s very different from how James saw it, but for me, the city is now irrevocably associated with the sound of drills and piles of scaffolding, all, of course, surrounded by ancient churches and convents. I think I’ll have to return to Toulouse in a few years to see how the development has enhanced the city, rather than making it the dustiest and noisiest part of our trip.

    IMG_2330
    Hmm, Toulouse’s most spectacular church was presented a little differently to how James would have seen it…

    Montpellier

    Here’s where James and I agree. For some reason, I had it in my mind that Montpellier was a bit of a British tourist trap — how wrong I was. We could’ve spent all summer there, exploring and eating. We had snails and wandered its little streets — we even became incredibly frustrated when a shop we found one morning disappeared without a trace in the afternoon. It took a treasure hunt before our train left the next morning to find it (it had been hidden down a secret adjacent street the whole time).

    “I spent two days there, mostly in the rain, and even under these circumstances I carried away a kindly impression.” – Henry James, A Little Tour in France. 

    We popped into the museum (Musée Fabre) James loved so much but didn’t explore it with his level of unrestrained detail. It’s a really special city (with excellent seafood) and I don’t doubt I’ll be back for a longer visit at some point in the future.

    A Little Tour of France was published in the nineteenth century, but because history is such a key part of any holiday in France nearly everything James mentioned was still there, there was just more around it. It was fun to read his caricatures of the people he encountered in each city of his tour, which really puts the buildings and landscapes you’re visiting into a unique context.

    Another City by the Book from this trip will be coming soon! 

  • Review: Promising Young Women

    Review: Promising Young Women

    Like with most stories that start with a twenty-something London-based office worker navigating the breakdown of a long-term relationship, your mind settles in for a harmless piece of Chick-Lit. And then Caroline O’Donoghue’s Promising Young Women knocks you off-centre by turning into something else entirely.

    The praise on the book’s sleeve repeatedly uses the word “gothic.” Thanks to a module I did in my final year at Swansea (brilliantly named Uncanny places and cyberspaces: Gender and the fantastic) I’m well aware that gothic tropes aren’t limited to stories set in haunted houses in the nineteenth century, but even so Promising Young Women does something totally refreshing with ideas of uncanniness. It’s a novel that proves how relevant gothic images, like starving women fading away, mirrors, periods and other bodily fluids, continue to be relevant and effective at portraying contemporary crises.

    “I don’t have a boyfriend or a fabulous career, and I think she’d like some better adjectives to describe me to her friends with.” – Promising Young Women

    At first, the book doesn’t have the most groundbreaking plot you’ve ever heard of (woman’s anonymous blog seeps into her real life) but O’Donoghue gradually gets under your skin as she tells Jane’s story. A story that while almost fantastical is likely to be relatable and understandable for any young working woman.

    The darkness and depth of this book creep up on you and by the time you’ve realised, you can’t put it down. Dealing with power imbalances (professional and romantic), mental illness and the false security of the Internet’s anonymity, this debut novel makes O’Donoghue one to watch.