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Cathy Earnshaw or Jane Eyre? Petrova or Posy? Scarlett or Melanie? Lace or Valley of the Dolls? On a pilgrimage to Wuthering Heights, Samantha Ellis found herself arguing with her best friend about which heroine was best: Jane Eyre or Cathy Earnshaw. She was all for wild, passionate Cathy; but her friend found Cathy silly, a snob, while courageous Jane makes her own way. And that’s when Samantha realised that all her life she’d been trying to be Cathy when she should have been trying to be Jane. So she decided to look again at her heroines – the girls, women, books that had shaped her ideas of the world and how to live. Some of them stood up to the scrutiny (she will always love Lizzy ...
A hilarious new spin on the Hollywood romcom featuring two proposals, two weddings, an elopement and a cast of unforgettable characters. Kate likes her men tall, dark and smouldering. She has a fatal attraction to bad men. Then she meets Steve... Steve is a feminist. Can Kate overcome her love of lipstick, cupcakes and Heathcliff? Can Steve forgo the ethical confetti and learn to be a little bit more ravishing in bed? Can the two of them reinvent romance for the twenty-first century? Samantha Ellis's play How to Date a Feminist premiered at the Arcola Theatre, London, in 2016, ahead of a UK tour.
A sassy, offbeat comedy-drama about rebelling against your roots. Rivka wants the perfect Orthodox wedding. With two weeks to go, she has the man, the dress - and the wig. But when doubt is cast on her wig, everything starts to unravel. Rivka finds herself far from home, up a tree and in the midst of an anti-road protest, not knowing whether she'll be able to go back to where she came from... Or even if she wants to. Samantha Ellis' play Cling To Me Like Ivy was inspired by a chance remark by Victoria Beckham in 2004 which sparked a crisis within the Orthodox Jewish community about the wigs worn by married women. The play was first performed at The Door, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, in February 2010, followed by a UK tour.
A funny, touching, inspiring exploration of the role of heroines, and our favourite books, in all our lives. Cathy Earnshaw or Jane Eyre? Petrova or Posy? Scarlett or Melanie? Lace or Valley of the Dolls? On a pilgrimage to Wuthering Heights, Samantha Ellis found herself arguing with her best friend about which heroine was best: Jane Eyre or Cathy Earnshaw. She was all for wild, passionate Cathy; but her friend found Cathy silly, a snob, while courageous Jane makes her own way. And that's when Samantha realised that all her life she'd been trying to be Cathy when she should have been trying to be Jane. So she decided to look again at her heroines -- the girls, women, books that had shaped he...
A collection of monologues inspired by Ovid written by female and non-binary British playwrights.
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book “Whom to marry, and when will it happen—these two questions define every woman’s existence.” So begins Spinster, a revelatory and slyly erudite look at the pleasures and possibilities of remaining single. Using her own experiences as a starting point, journalist and cultural critic Kate Bolick invites us into her carefully considered, passionately lived life, weaving together the past and present to examine why she—along with over 100 million American women, whose ranks keep growing—remains unmarried. This unprecedented demographic shift, Bolick explains, is the logical outcome of hundreds of years of change that has neither been fully ...
Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2015 Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, at the age of twenty-two, not to return until a quarter of a century later. When at last he comes home to Pointe-Noire, a bustling port town on Congo's south-eastern coast, he finds a country that in some ways has changed beyond recognition: the cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on glamorous American culture has become a Pentecostal temple, and his secondary school has been re-named in honour of a previously despised colonial ruler. But many things remain unchanged, not least the swirling mythology of Congolese culture which still informs everyday life in Pointe-Noire. Mabanckou though, now a decorated French-Congolese writer and esteemed professor at UCLA, finds he can only look on as an outsider at the place where he grew up. As he delves into his childhood, into the life of his departed mother and into the strange mix of belonging and absence that informs his return to Congo, Mabanckou slowly builds a stirring exploration of the way home never leaves us, however long ago we left home.
Called "a feminist classic" by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times Book Review, this pathbreaking book of literary criticism is now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Appignanesi that speaks to how The Madwoman in the Attic set the groundwork for subsequent generations of scholars writing about women writers, and why the book still feels fresh some four decades later. "Gilbert and Gubar have written a pivotal book, one of those after which we will never think the same again."--Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Washington Post Book World
“Tender and unflinching, a beautifully observed novel about familial love and stoicism in the face of heartbreak.”—Carys Bray, award-winning author of The Museum of You Maeve Maloney is a force to be reckoned with. Despite nearing 80, she keeps Sea View Lodge just as her parents did during Morecambe’s 1950s heyday. But now only her employees and regular guests recognize the tenderness and heartbreak hidden beneath her spikiness. Until, that is, Vincent shows up. Vincent is the last person Maeve wants to see. He is the only man alive to have known her twin sister, Edie. The nightingale to Maeve’s crow, the dawn to Maeve’s dusk, Edie would have set her sights on the stage—all thi...