Normal Women: From the Number One Bestselling Author Comes 900 Years of Women Making History

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Whether you are on the Board or in the kitchen, a medieval peasant or modern day medic, a Victorian street-sweeper or eighteenth century hand-spinner - if you are a woman, there’s every chance you are underpaid.

I’d registered lots of love for Ainslie Hogarth’s Mothering but hadn’t got around to reading it which also made me keen.

And so we find him celebrating skateboarding but also caring for his dying father, gardening then confronting racism, all rendered in prose that’s both punchy and compassionate. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where Christine Coulson worked writing labels for exhibits.

Women in translation aside, I’m determined not to be swayed by lots of new fiction this year following some disappointments last year, but I do find your reviews very useful for my subscription readers! Its leader Renata, with the “deep, intensely dark eyes of a dove,” coerces Dani into working for her, including some light sex-work.She wrote her first ever novel, Wideacre, when she was completing her PhD in eighteenth-century literature and it sold worldwide, heralding a new era for historical fiction. This is not another book about three or four well-known heroines; it is a book about millions of women: those who left records and those who were ‘hidden from history. Back home in Metcalf — which has, in the years since she left home, become a “hub” for tech start-ups and think tanks and, therefore, commercial developers like Clark — Dani begins to feel that motherhood has plucked at something ominous within her, a suspicion that threatens to unravel Dani’s understanding of who she is and was supposed to be: “Marriage and children, the two most powerful cultural currents for women, the two things they’re trained from birth to desire more than anything else, were, in fact, destroying them. And I felt like I was reading two stories/writings merged together, because once we got to the part where Dani meets Renata for the first time, the story actually picks up pace and becomes interesting.

Before becoming an author, Coulson worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, writing wall-mounted labels to accompany exhibits. And if it’s supposed to be a horrific ending in that she’s lost to the cult and brainwashed, it’s not exaggerated enough to make that obvious. But that energy is what is going to make people love this book, so if you ruin their love for the book with the ending, you ruin the book for them.Finally, Dani has found something she could be good at, even great at; meaningful work that will protect her and Lotte from poverty, and provide true economic independence from Clark. From popstars to TikTok superstars, groundbreaking campaigners to best selling authors, Philippa welcomes women from all walks of life to look back at the past lives of half the population, and put women where they belong – centre stage. And it maybe won’t be for everyone, but I winced and laughed and nodded my head with recognition throughout; and while straight married women might benefit from seeing themselves in this, men might benefit even more by getting a peek inside their wives’ secret thoughts. In contrast to Anya, a “Normal Woman” who was “the portrait of self-care, a pursuit the mothers in the online mom forums held sacred, and another maternal obligation for all but the lucky few to fail at spectacularly,” the protagonist considers herself capable of something more than boozy backyard brunches and poop talk. The relationship between Dani and Clark is 100% believable: they are both a little selfish, a little guarded, but make efforts to take care of one another (with both feeling resentful when those efforts aren’t recognised).

Sapphism, the Cult of the Clitoris, coded diaries and a bower of bliss - Philippa Gregory tells the story of women who love women, and those who tried to stop them. Gregory places centre stage decades of scholarship in women’s history, a genre that started to become important only in the 1970s. I loved Motherthing but I just didn't get this one, I love the writing and the unhinged anticipation of the character and plot but I kept waiting for it to go somewhere, but for me it fell flat. All themes explored in a novel that spends too much time circling through characterization without fully fleshing them out. I received an advanced copy of Ainslie Hogarth's newest novel, Normal Women, and I immediately rushed to start it.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. This is not another book or podcast about three or four well-known heroines; it is a story about millions of women: those who left records and those who were ‘hidden from history. The ‘normal women’ you will meet in her pages went to war, ploughed the fields, campaigned, wrote, and loved. If you’re going down the mommy influencer route, where are the online pedophiles and the child exploitation? I can see what Hogarth was trying to do by bringing in the 'cult' element, and having that as a contrast to Dani's mundane interactions with her fellow mum friends, but I felt as though its potential got lost once the book became more of a mystery than a commentary of maternity in society, and I just wasn't as interested in it from there.