'Things A Bright Girl Can Do'

Things A Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls

Two Young Adult books about women's suffrage in as many weeks is just wonderful stuff. And hot on the heels of last week's enjoyment of Anna Carey's excellent The Making of Mollie comes Sally Nicholls' Things A Bright Girl Can Do, which steps things up a gear and moves us on a few years in terms of age range.

From the blurb:

"Evelyn is seventeen, and though she is rich and clever, she may never be allowed to follow her older brother to university. Enraged that she is expected to marry her childhood sweetheart rather than be educated, she joins the Suffragettes, and vows to pay the ultimate price for women's freedom.

"May is fifteen, and already sworn to the cause, though she and her fellow Suffragists refuse violence. When she meets Nell, a girl who's grown up in hardship, she sees a kindred spirit. Together and in love, the two girls start to dream of a world where all kinds of women have their place."

I loved everything about Sally's new book. Our three sheroes are all well-rounded, engaging and involved characters and involve none of the stereotypes that some previous suffrage novels have fallen into (and which I grumbled about in this post). Instead, Sally gives us raw and gritty depictions of the realities of suffrage campaigning on the eve of the war and into the war, leading to perspectives I've never previously seen in suffrage literature. 

For example, while Evelyn is arrested for her suffragette militancy, it is the depiction of hunger and particularly thirst strike that dominates the description of her prison stay. Indeed, the harrowing explanation of the damage that six days of thirst striking can do to the body was both compulsive and repulsive in its reading, and is not something I've seen in other suffrage novels which have instead favoured the more conventional graphic depiction of force feeding. 

Another good example is the peaceful campaigning of Quaker May and her mother. May's mother has refused to pay her taxes in common with many suffragettes and suffragists who wouldn't pay taxation without representation. But while popular history has us believing that suffrage campaigning ended the second war was declared, May and her mother show us how untrue this was. Through their characters we are also shown the bitterness that many campaigners felt at the volte-face shown by leaders Emmeline Pankhurst and Millicent Fawcett in their support of the war. Instead, May's mother continues to refuse to pay her taxes well into the war... to the point that the bailiffs come round and not only take away all of their possessions, but also move in with the women for six weeks beforehand. Just startling. 

And to have teenage lesbian romance written about without fuss is also highly commended, as is Nell's insistence on wearing men's clothes because she prefers them even though she is jeered at and ridiculed for it. 

Things A Bright Girl Can Do is utterly wonderful, hopeful and inspiring. Please buy it, read it and share it. 

'The Making of Mollie' by Anna Carey

If there's one thing I am guaranteed to love, it is a novel about the suffrage era. Especially those novels aimed at younger readers, because I am passionate that children should be taught about this important and exciting part of our not-so-distant history. So I was delighted to come across Anna Carey's 2016 novel The Making of Mollie. (I'm no expert on guessing the appropriate age range for kids' books but, given our shero is 14, I'd suggest that's about the right age range for younger readers - although I'm nearly 40 and I also loved it). 

Dublin-based Anna is already a well-established children's author thanks to her popular Rebecca series, for which she has won at the Irish Book Awards. But Mollie is her first piece of historical fiction. You wouldn't know it, though. 

There are many reasons I loved reading Mollie but the absolute number one reason is that it doesn't follow the very well trodden path that so many other suffrage books have. So before I tell you what Mollie is, I will reassure you about what she is not. Mollie is not a working-class girl who meets a middle-class lady who educates her about suffrage; she does not suddenly make friends with Mrs Pankhurst (who was presumably less accessible than the novels suggest); and she does not go to prison and endure a graphic episode of force-feeding. Thank goodness.

Instead, here is what Mollie is. This is a really engaging book written in the form of letters from a schoolgirl to a friend, and our shero is instantly likeable and warm. The period in the book only spans a few months and arguably nothing hugely significant happens (as in, Mollie doesn't do outrageously militant acts, she doesn't get arrested, her parents don't disown her), but because of this it is so much more believable. 

You believe that Mollie and her friend Nora were real people, and that there were hundreds of young girls like them who did exactly the same sort of stunts to feel part of an adult movement. You believe that Mollie existed in Dublin and plucked up the courage to chalk pavements after school and sneak her way out of the house to attend impassioned meetings. You believe that Mollie is real. And that's what makes Mollie stand out from so much other suffrage fiction. Hurray.

I also loved that fact that this book is set in Dublin, and the focus is away from the Women's Social and Political Union and the Pankhurst family and instead is on the Irish Women's Franchise League and its leader Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington (of whom I did not previously know). Anna has used several real-life Dublin suffrage events as anchors around which to pin her story and characters, and it works like a charm. The end result is I plan to go away and find out more about suffrage in Ireland (and surely that's a great result for any author, to inspire her readers to read more).

There is so much to praise about this book, so I urge you to buy a copy for the young teenagers in your life and also a copy for yourself. 

The best news of all is that, judging from Anna's recent tweets, it looks like it won't be too long before another Mollie book hits our shelves. And I, for one, cannot wait. Deeds not words.

'The Tin Drum' at Bristol Old Vic

Photo: Steve Tanner

Hurray! Kneehigh Theatre Company is back in town. Everyone loves Kneehigh - the experimental but accessible Cornish company that prides itself on breathing new life into forgotten fairy tales. And now here they are with a re-telling of the 1959 Günter Grass post-war tale The Tin Drum, directed by Kneehigh artistic director Mike Shepherd. Grass’ original book received the Nobel Prize for Literature, such was its impact and its reflection of World War Two.

When Oskar turns three, he decides life would be better if he never grew up so he resolves to remain a child forever by taking drastic action. Fueled by his anger, his angelic singing voice and his indestructible tin drum, Oskar steels himself to face the world from perpetual infancy. But plans don’t always work out how you want them to, and Oskar hasn’t accounted for the Black Witch and her hold on his world.

What follows is a story about love and war, written by Carl Grose from Grass’s original text, and with a musical score composed by Charles Hazlewood; another two Kneehigh stalwarts. I feel special mention must be given to Hazlewood’s score here, which is truly extraordinary. It has strong echoes of early, raw, electro, Travelogue-era Human League throughout, and is extremely successful in conveying the growing, claustrophobia and panic that consumes a community being enveloped by war and hatred.

But how do we know we can trust Oskar as a narrator? He is a peculiarly self-aware foetus at one stage, and later an angry, precocious and bitter toddler, resentful in the most childish of ways. But he has insight and wisdom. And despite being a mere puppet (and I’ll be honest, when I saw there was a puppet in the cast I really sighed as I do feel puppets have been done to death in contemporary theatre lately), his hollow, dark-eyed face manages to convey a range of emotions depending on which angle the light catches him.

However, the stars of this Kneehigh production of The Tin Drum are undoubtedly Hazlewood’s compelling and effective score and the actor Patrycja Kujawska, who has been with the company for almost 10 years and is always an utter joy to watch.

The Tin Drum is a very special and important show, and has stripped a complex novel down to its bare bones. The audience is left with no doubt that although Grass’ novel was about World War Two, the Kneehigh production is equally a statement about the current state we find ourselves in a terrifying new world.

The Tin Drum is performed at Bristol Old Vic until 18 November, when it continues its tour to Cornwall and then Shoreditch. Click here for more info.

'Rita, Sue & Bob, Too' - Bristol Old Vic

Photo: Richard Davenport

What has the potential of being a murky, seedy, gloomy piece of class tourism is far from it. The Out of Joint Theatre Company revival of the classic 1982 play Rita, Sue and Bob, Too by Andrea Dunbar is as much a commentary on youth and optimism in 2017 as it is a statement about early '80s Thatcherite dissatisfaction and rising unemployment for the disenfranchised.

With Taj Atwal and Gemma Dobson assuming the roles of sassy 15-year-olds Rita and Sue, the play is already in good hands. These are two capable and assured actors who are more than at home playing the self-assured sheroes of the title. And while Hollyoaks' James Atherton has the, perhaps, unenviable task of playing the potentially unlikeable Bob, James somehow manages to makes us feel just a tad sorry for this discontented young man who is stuck in a loveless marriage and angry dissatisfaction with his lot. 

Whether you've seen a previous version of this play or you've seen the seminal 1987 film directed by Alan Clarke, there's a strong chance you know the plot. But just in case you don't... Bradford schoolgirls Rita and Sue are seduced by the father of the children they babysit. And when I say 'seduce', I use the word loosely. While driving them home, Bob stops by the moors and asks the girls if they fancy a "jump", and they do. What follows is 10 minutes of delightfully uncomfortable stage sex while the three cast members have sex while squashed into the front of a makeshift car. This is the least sexy sex scene you will ever see, but it is a triumph of deadpan acting and bored one liners. 

On paper, we should hate Bob. This is a 27-year-old married man with two young children who repeatedly seduces two underage girls. He's cheating on his wife (who angrily knows he's having it off with someone but can't work out who), he's breaking up the family home for his two children, he's knowingly committing rape by having sex with two minors... But Bob is such a pathetic character. He steadfastly refuses to believe he has done anything wrong. He certainly doesn't think he warrants the mouthful of abuse Sue's father (David Walker) delivers him. Poor old, Bob... (I say this with my tongue in my cheek).

But the reason why Rita, Sue and Bob, Too works is that to all intents and purposes it is Rita and Sue who are in control. While young, they're far from innocent. They may tell Bob they're virgins, but they're not. They have no belief initially that Bob will leave his wife Michelle (Samantha Robinson) for either of them. They're just bored. They're on the cusp of leaving school knowing there are no jobs for them once they finish their unpaid Youth Training Schemes in a boring factory. They're living life while they can. They're just having fun.

The loyalty of the two young women to each other is impressive, and this is the true core of Andrea Dunbar's play. Neither Rita nor Sue is bothered that they are sharing the same man. Neither Rita nor Sue is bothered when they find out that Bob has been meeting them both secretly for sex without the other one. Rita and Sue live very much in the moment... until Rita becomes pregnant. At which point, true to her loyalty to her best friend, Sue becomes righteous with indignation at the suggestion that she will carry on having sex with Bob, because now he's having a baby with Rita there are boundaries to respect. Wow!

Much has rightly been written about Andrea Dunbar's extraordinary rise as a playwright, as well as her tragically short life. Much of what Andrea wrote was, at least partly, autobiographical, and she grew up on the kind of estates that Rita and Sue did. Doubtless she knew a Rita and a Sue. And it's this distance from the private school upbringing, the university education, the well-off parents of the majority of writers that means Andrea actually knows what she's talking about. She was a writer who actually understood what it was like to be a woman. 

Respect to Out of Joint Theatre for this production, and bravo for an excellent choice of casting. Rita, Sue and Bob, Too is only on at Bristol Old Vic until October 7, but the play continues to tour the UK until February 2018. Click here for more information.

Photo: Richard Davenport