My new book!

Tomorrow (February 26) sees the publication of my new book The Women Who Built Bristol (Tangent Books), which is a fundraising project for the charity Bristol Women's Voice. I'm really chuffed with the finished book - it was so much hard work but now having the actual book back makes it so worthwhile.

Containing 250 inspiring women, three sheroic dogs and one heartbroken barmaid from Easton. The Women Who Built Bristol is a bursting compendium of brilliant women who helped to shape Bristol into the vibrant city it is today. From pin makers to police chiefs, from workhouse inmates to lord mayors, this book shows that Bristol was built by women. Also contains 30 brand new illustrations. 

“Jane Duffus and fellow contributors of The Women Who Built Bristol introduce us to a glorious and eclectic set of women who are linked to Bristol. This a wonderful reminder of the texture of women’s lives and their influence in every sphere – something historical accounts often forget. A great initiative from Bristol Women’s Voice, I hope other cities also follow suit.”
Helen Pankhurst; granddaughter of Sylvia and great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst

'A Petrol Scented Spring'

A Petrol Scented Spring by Ajay Close

Wow! This book has been sitting on my To Be Read pile for well over a year. Thankfully, something made me finally pick it up to take on a succession of long train journeys at the weekend and I am now a) kicking myself for not having read it sooner and b) praising myself for picking such an absorbing and compelling and wonderful book to accompany me on my travels.

A Petrol Scented Spring by the Scottish author Ajay Close came to my attention via nothing more exotic than my periodic online search for novels about the suffrage movement. But this is far from your bog-standard suffrage novel; this is something quite, quite different.

Set in Perth, Scotland, we are offered a rare glimpse of suffrage life north of the border, which is a welcome change from the majority of novels that are London-centric. As such, the real-life characters who Ajay has used as the basis for many of her characters in the meticulously well-researched A Petrol Scented Spring are not ones I had previously known of, but have now becomes ones I want to know more about.

Centered around the suffocating and almost-mediaeval Perth Prison, we meet the reclusive and repressed prison doctor Hugh Ferguson Watson. A man in his early 40s who has been kissed only once as a teenager and who seems to have scant idea how to relate to actual humans, particularly female humans. Watson’s previous role was as the doctor in a mental asylum, where he learnt how to force feed patients who were not of sound mind. Now, he has been enlisted to the prison services to deal with hunger striking suffragettes and begin the barbaric process of force feeding these political prisoners.

Watson becomes obsessed with one suffragette in particular, Arabella Scott - a woman who his ‘love’ obliges him to torture in the most bizarre and disgusting means possible in order (in his mind) to keep her pure for himself. Arabella is a strong-willed woman with a sharp intellect, steadfast composure and unerring stubborness to endure multiple force feedings every single day… during the entire nine months of her incarceration. As if this brutal twice-daily assault was not enough (we read graphically about how Arabella regurgitates the egg mixture forced into her stomach by a greased tube, and how it comes out stained pink with blood and gritty with bits of broken teeth), Watson keeps Arabella in solitary confinement from the other prisoners, but with at least one wardress to sit in her cell and prevent her leaving her bed, sitting up or even turning to lie on her side - causing the most unimaginable pain in the prisoner’s motionless body. Yet somehow, Watson believes he is doing this because he loves Arabella and wants to keep her pure.

Ajay Close does a wonderful job or bringing the stinking, wretched prison to life in the reader’s head. She conjures up cold walls dripping with damp, fetid and stinking rooms with windows that do not open, and the horrors of the screams from other cells that echo down the corridors. We read graphically of prisoners who are force fed via the anus. We read graphically of prisoners who are left close to death thanks to Watson’s abusive treatment of them. And we read graphically of prisoners whose most intimate body parts are exposed and ogled by Watson’s lecherous assistant, Dr Lindsay, who leaves the suffragettes terrified that he will rape them.

And then we meet the naive Donella; a well-brought up young lady who is staying in Perth with relatives to recuperate after an illness. By chance she meets Dr Watson, falls in love and the two quickly marry, despite the heavy suspicion of her sister Hilda. There’s something about Donella that appeals to the sexless Dr Watson: she looks identical to Arabella. But of course, she is not Arabella… and there the novel takes an even more cruel and horrible turn.

Honestly, A Petrol Scented Spring is the most gripping and compelling novel I’ve read for months. It quite genuinely is a page-turner. I usually find it very hard to read books on trains as all the noises and people and announcements distract me, but A Petrol Scented Spring managed to completely catch my attention and draw me in to its dark, stinking and brutal world. I even had to stay up reading it into the twilight hours when I got home to ensure I found out how it ended. Hint: you should do the same.

PS - As further proof of my newfound adoration of Ajay Close, please have a read of the ‘About Me’ page on her website. One day I hope to engineer a situation where we go out for drinks together, ‘cos she sounds like she would be a bloody good drinking companion.  

'Earth & High Heaven'

Gwethalyn Graham, photo via Persephone website

Earth & High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham

Originally published in 1944, Earth & High Heaven (reprinted care of Persephone Books) by Canadian author Gwethalyn Graham is a fascinating and compelling look at the fledgling relationship between Jewish lawyer Marc Reiser and newspaper reporter Erica Drake, whose archaic parents are strongly opposed to her relationship with a Jewish man.

Set in Canada during the three months in summer 1942 between Erica and Marc’s first meeting, and Marc’s subsequent conscription overseas to fight in WW2, Earth & High Heaven is a claustrophobic and tense novel that neatly sums up the agonies of a love that is dampened by bigoted families.

There are chapters filled with intense dialogue and debate between Erica and Marc, and Erica and her stubborn mule of a father, Charles. These concentrated conversations feel tight and close and staccato, yet sadly just as relevant now in a post-Brexit, post-Trump age. But they are beautifully peppered with scenes of Erica at work with her newspaper colleagues on the local paper, where her quick fire wit and sharp talk with her colleagues brings to mind the obvious comparison of reporter Hildy Johnson (played by Rosalind Russell) in the brilliant 1940 screwball comedy His Girl Friday.

To a contemporary reader, the bigotry and prejudice that Erica’s parents irrationally hold towards Marc is stupefying. They won’t allow him in the house and therefore they have never spoken to him, yet they remain steadfast that their daughter would be ruining her life and become dead to them if she were to marry Marc, for no other reason than that he is a Jew. In 2018, this is startling to read. But in 1944, when Earth & High Heaven was published, this was doubtless a common view: one that Gwethalyn hoped to expose with her brutal novel showing up these ignorant attitudes.

Earth & High Heaven has sold 1.5 million copies since 1944 and been translated into 15 languages, as well as spending 38 weeks in The New York Times bestseller list. And having read it, it is easy to see why this novel has become such an important book.

'Until We Win'

Shortly before Christmas I wrote a piece about Linda Newbery's 2004 novel for young adults called Polly's March, and added a PS that I'd spotted she had a more recent book out about the suffragettes. Well, now I've got my paws on a copy and am reporting back...

Until We Win: They Demand The Vote was published just last year by Barrington Stoke Teen and picks up the suffragette mantle and moves it onwards from Polly's adventures (NB: Until We Win features an entirely different cast of characters to Polly's March; it's not a sequel). 

In her new book, Linda focuses on 17-year-old Lizzy who is frustrated by the preferential treatment her brother gets and bored in her job, so when she meets suffragettes Julia and Elsie in a cafe her life is transformed for the better. Lizzy throws herself into the suffragette movement, fighting for votes for women and finally finding purpose to her life. 

With whistlestop breathlessness, Until We Win sees Lizzy rapidly move from office girl to suffragette to prisoner to war worker, touching on lots of significant historical details. Initially, I thought it a little odd how quickly the story moved from one element to another without giving too much focus to the different activities Lizzy became involved in, but after looking the book up on Barrington Stoke's website I realised Linda had written the book in a particular way to make it more accessible to dyslexic readers. The book has a reading age of 8 years but is intended to appeal to teenage readers, and even the layout and font used has been given consideration for dyslexic readers. Which is a fabulous initiative from the author and publishers.

Can we also give a big nod to the beautiful cover? Designed by artist Stewart Easton, the cover is a reproduction of an embroidery he created for the book in suffragette colours of purple, green and white and is deliberately reminiscent of the hand-sewn suffragette banners that the WSPU created to display at marches and events. You can read more about the cover design here. 

PS - The reason I have included Holly Webb's book The Princess and the Suffragette in the photo with this post is that I am LOVING the covers on the current crop of suffragette teen fiction. They're absolutely stunning and a far cry from the rather fusty covers that used to adorn teen suffrage fiction in previous decades. Hurrah for beautiful book covers.