Celebrating Lee Miller

A habitué of the smoky cabarets, opium dens and Surrealist parties of 1930s Paris, Lee Miller was one of the most beautiful and fascinating women of the twentieth century. 

Whitney Scharer has brought Miller’s story to life in her electric debut novel, The Age of Light. After starting her career as a fashion model, Lee Miller came to occupy a unique position in the avant-garde of the inter-war years. She worked, and had an affair, with the photographer Man Ray before becoming an acclaimed war photographer and one of the first people to photograph the concentration camp at Dachau when it was liberated.

I will be joining Whitney Scharer to discuss her dazzling new novel about Miller as well as the fascination she continues to exert, and her role in the often-macho Surrealist movement

Blood by Maggie Gee

Maggie Gee has written 14 novels including The White Family, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize). Blood, her latest, is a bizarrely misfiring black comedy. The setting is Thanet, which was the only Ukip-held council in Britain until March last year, when almost half of its councillors resigned and formed a breakaway group. The choice of Thanet is not accidental, and one’s initial hope was that this might be the first great Brexit novel.

Brexit is mentioned, but the narrative is dominated by 38-year-old ‘buxom bruiser’ Monica Ludd, an unconventional deputy head at a local secondary school, who we are repeatedly told is six foot.

Adèle by Leila Slimani

Leila Slimani’s “Lullaby” was the best selling book in France in 2016 before becoming an international success. “Adèle” came out in France before “Lullaby”, but this is its first outing in English, in a sharp and nuanced translation from Sam Taylor. It is a short, disturbing novel, written in the present tense and set in a bleak and amoral Paris.

Like Emma Bovary, Adèle is married to a doctor. She also echoes the nihilism of Flaubert’s heroine. Adèle is a successful journalist, but thoroughly bored by her rather proper, borderline-prudish husband Richard. She feels excluded – almost redundant – because of her husband’s fierce love for their child. She is also obsessed by transgressive sex – with her boss, her best friend’s boyfriend, and a pair of male prostitutes.

Another Planet by Tracey Thorn

Tracey Thorn, the singer-songwriter and one half of the band Everything But the Girl, now feels like she lives a conventional middle-class life in north London, with her three children and partner of over 30 years. Even this apparently settled life doesn’t stop her father commenting: “Oh, Tracey. She’s from another planet.” We shouldn’t be surprised. After reading Thorn’s first memoir Bedsit Disco Queen, he said “I never knew Tracey was so into music”—this about a woman who has sold over nine million records.

Another Planet, Thorn’s second memoir, is full of such moments of low-key comedy but there is also a serious side to the estrangement that she felt from her parents. She is candid about how the “distance that had grown up between me and my parents in my teens never quite closed up.”

The Midult

I’ll be joining The Midults Annabel Rivkin and Emilie McMeekan on Thursday 31st January to discuss their new book: I’m Absolutely Fine! A Manual for Imperfect Women. They’ll be offering a wry, heartfelt and edgy look at what it is to be a grown-up woman  and will also answer all your questions. This event is now SOLD OUT but if you would like a signed copy of their book, please contact lovely Village Books, who are organising the event, via the link below.

Golden Child by Claire Adam

Twins make up only a small fraction of the population but loom disproportionately large in literature. They are handy for storylines involving mistaken identity and creepy synchronicity, and offer the chance to show how people whose lives begin in the same place can take drastically different paths. A contrast between dissimilar twins is at the heart of “Golden Child”, Claire Adam’s assured and compelling first novel, which is set in rural Trinidad, where she grew up, during the 1980s.

Unlike Viola and Sebastian in “Twelfth Night”, Peter and Paul Deyalsingh do not appear to be “An apple, cleft in two”. Not at all. Paul “tends to slink around”, while Peter “walks with a bold step”. The boys—aged 13 when the book opens—have been treated differently from the beginning. Paul was deprived of oxygen at birth; a doctor suggested to the twins’ father, Clyde, that “mental retardation” might have resulted.