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A biography with a twist about Emily Brontë, the subject of major 2023 film Emily starring Emma Mackey. Emily Brontë occupies a special place in the English literary canon. And rightly so: the incomparable Wuthering Heights is a novel that has bewitched us for almost 200 years, and the character of Heathcliff is seen by some as the ultimate romantic hero—and villain. But Emily herself remains an enigmatic figure, often portrayed as awkward, volatile, as a misanthrope, as “no normal being.” That’s the conventional wisdom on Emily as a person, but is it accurate, is it fair? In this biography with a twist, Claire O’Callaghan conjures a new image of Emily and rehabilitates her reputation by exploring the themes of her life and work—her feminism, her passion for the natural world—as well as the art she has inspired, and even the “fake news” stories about her. What do we really know about her romantic life, for example, or about who and what inspired her characters and stories? What we discover is that Emily was, in fact, a thoroughly modern woman. So now, two centuries on, it’s time for the real Emily Brontë to step forward.
Discover the stunning historical novel from the award-winning author of Learned by Heart - perfect for fans of Affinity, Alias Grace and The Confessions of Frannie Langton Set in London and Monmouth in the late 1700s, this is an extraordinary novel about Mary Saunders, the young daughter of a poor seamstress. Mary hungers greedily for fine clothes and ribbons, as people of her class do for food and warmth. It's a hunger that lures her into prostitution at the age of thirteen. Mary is thrown out by her distraught mother when she gets pregnant and almost dies on the dangerous streets of London. Her saviour is Doll - a prostitute. Mary roams London freely with Doll, selling her body to all manner of 'cullies', dressed whorishly in colourful, gaudy dresses with a painted red smile. Faced with bad debts and threats upon her life she eventually flees to Monmouth, her mother's hometown, where she attempts to start a new life as a maid in Mrs Jones's house. But Mary soon discovers that she can't escape her past and just how dearly people like her pay for yearnings not fitting to their class in society...
Attempting to rebuild her life after a violent relationship, Maggie Turner, a successful young artist, moves from London to Allihies and buys an ancient abandoned cottage. Keen to concentrate on her art, she is captivated by the wild beauty of her surroundings. After renovations, she hosts a house-warming weekend for friends. A drunken game with a Ouija board briefly descends into something more sinister, as Maggie apparently channels a spirit who refers to himself simply as 'The Master'. The others are visibly shaken, but the day after the whole thing is easily dismissed as the combination of suggestion and alcohol. Maggie immerses herself in her painting, but the work devolves, day by day, until her style is no longer recognisable. She glimpses things, hears voices, finds herself drawn to certain areas: a stone circle in the nearby hills, the reefs at the west end of the beach behind her home ... A compelling modern ghost story from a supremely talented writer. From the Costa Short Story Award Finalist, Billy O'Callaghan. 'a welcome voice to the pantheon of new Irish writing' - Edna O'Brien
*THE #3 IRISH BESTSELLER* 'Momentous and epic' BERNARD MACLAVERTY 'Superb and moving' JOHN BANVILLE 'A lovely, piercing book' SEBASTIAN BARRY Three generations. More than a century of famine, war, violence and love. At sixteen Nancy, the only member of her family to survive the Great Famine, leaves her small island for the mainland. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she feels irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair that soon throws her into a fight for her life. In 1920, Nancy's son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece together where he has come from, and who he wants to be. And in the early 1980s, Jer's youngest child Nellie is nearing the end of her life in a council house, moments away from her childhood home; remembering the night when she and her family stole back something that was rightfully theirs, she imagines what lies in store for those who will survive her. 'Brilliantly immerses us in its respective time periods' SUNDAY TIMES
Sarah Waters and Contemporary Feminisms presents ten readings of Sarah Waters’s fictions published to date in relation to feminism and contemporary feminist theory. The analysis offered in the collection investigates how Waters engages with recent debates on women and gender and how her writings reflect the different concerns of contemporary feminist theories. In particular, the collection includes new and innovative readings of how Waters’s novels address issues of patriarchy, female confinement, madness and misogyny, exploitation and oppression, repression and subordination, abortion, marriage and spinsterhood alongside passionate portrayals of female agency, desire, aesthetics, female sexual expression, and, of course, lesbianism.
'A poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time... will linger with you long after the book is closed' Guardian *SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARD 2020* On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit rendezvous. Once a month, for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven; these precious, hidden hours their only nourishment. But now, amid the howling of an angry snowstorm, the shut-down, out-of-season resort feels like the edge of the world. And their lives, suddenly, are on the brink – with news of serious illness on one side, and a move to the Midwest on the other.
Sarah Waters: Gender and Sexual Politics uniquely brings together feminist and queer theoretical perspectives on gender and sexuality through close analysis of works by Sarah Waters. This timely study examines topics ranging from heterosexuality, homosexuality, masculinities, femininities, sex, pornography, and the cultural effects of othering and domination across her work. The book covers each of Waters's published novels to date including Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith and The Paying Guests and also considers her non-fiction and academic writing as well as the television adaptations of her texts. O'Callaghan situates Water's writing as an important textual space for the examination of contemporary gender and sexuality studies and locates her as an astute commentator and contributor to twenty-first century gender and sexual politics.
This book explores the intersections of gender with class and race in the construction of national and imperial ideologies and their fluid transformation from the Romantic to the Victorian period and beyond, exposing how these cultural constructions are deeply entangled with the family metaphor. For example, by examining the re-signification of the “angel in the house” and the deviant woman in the context of unstable or contingent masculinities and across discourses of class and nation, the volume contributes to a more nuanced understanding of British cultural constructions in the long nineteenth century. The central idea is to unearth the historical roots of the family metaphor in the construction of national and imperial ideologies, and to uncover the interests served by its specific discursive formation. The book explores both male and female stereotypes, enabling a more perceptive comparison, enriched with a nuanced reflection on the construction and social function of class.
From The Other Boleyn Girl to Fingersmith , this collection explores the popularity of female-centred historical novels in recent years. It asks how these representations are influenced by contemporary gender politics, and whether they can be seen as part of a wider feminist project to recover women's history.