For some authors, the Bodleian Libraries have not always a safe haven for their work. Although marginalised texts are no longer demarcated with the phi symbol on their spines, with many having re-entered the undergraduate canon, Sophie Price discusses the valuable lessons we can learn from the Bodleian blacklist which remain pertinent today.
Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History is set in an exclusive college in Vermont but can be read as a satire of Oxford and its students. It invites us to question how little differentiates us from the elitist American universities.
"Each of this week’s recommendations demonstrate that female voices are far more nuanced and diverse than fiction has traditionally led us to believe."
"Tender and thought-provoking, The Vanishing Half offers a reflection on whether a person can choose who they are. In a world where Stella and Desiree represent black and white, Bennett embraces the grey area of personal, racial, and gendered identity."
"This week’s recommendations each represent a unique “texture of lived experience” to perfection, proving that historical fiction is a genre full of excitement and experimentation, and one that also demands to be taken seriously."
"The authority of the white and male point of view is undermined when voices that have been silenced for so long are finally given the opportunity to speak out, and to tell the story anew. This process of re-reading applies, perhaps most crucially, to history itself."
”Since the prize’s inception, it has faced backlash from women and men alike, with accusations of misandry thrown at the gender criterion and with some critics suggesting that the prize is patronising and belittling to the women that win it.”
"Pond is the exemplary proof that ‘the knack of living’ lies in attending to such ‘small matters’ as the number of spoonfuls of sugar added to a cup of coffee."
"After months of quarantining, of Zoom calls and empty supermarket shelves, it feels foolish to suggest we’ll emerge from this crisis as the same people as we were when we entered it. Consequently, our writing must also change."
"As idyllic as it sounds to vanish for a few days to the literary haven of Hay-on-Wye, for many, financial and geographic constraints curtail the prospect of reaching the so-called ‘Woodstock of the mind’."
"Revisiting these childhood classics gives us an important reminder for these definitely non-normative times: seek happiness in the unlikeliest places. Love is patient, love is kind, but it is also a little shy and very, very funny."
“A historical allegory that mirrors political events through the livelihood of the Al-Jawad family, it is a seminal work of modern Arabic literature and is crucial to understanding Egypt’s modern history, society and culture.”
"As well as the direct dialogue from writer to reader, I realised that I was just one of a larger readership: an intoxicating mix of individual and collective experience that was validating above all else."
"It took my own experience of trauma to recognise that maligning self-help can contribute to disempowerment, and to think non-judgementally about the traumas which might have led other people to seek self-help and self-care."
"The novella’s real focus is the inevitability of death itself, which is so gargantuan, physically and philosophically, that retrospection is crushed into irrelevance."
"Dystopian narratives may be bleak, but they do not contribute to the barbarity of our times: they are, instead, a powerful reminder that in the midst of crisis, beauty and hope do remain."
Florence Given sells feminism as what it is: freeing and utterly delicious. She affirms and articulates precisely the points it feels so hard to put your finger on sometimes.