Karma, whatever your views on NLMG, I am glad to say that it's much more readable than The Buried Giant !
6. Period, Emma Barnett
The journalist Emma Barnett (who I only know vaguely - I haven't heard her on Woman's Hour and not sure that I have ever seen or heard her on anything tbh) is an endometriosis sufferer and, as she reminds us here, the first woman to announce on live TV that she was menstruating. Emma's aim, in this book, is to convince women that we need to cast off the shame and ignorance that surround periods and become educated, open and proud of the workings of our bodies. She examines many of the prejudices which have affected women over centuries, and those which still affect us, even in countries which claim to be modern and equal in opportunity.
This is a good rant, and Emma sheds a lot of useful sunlight on subjects such as period poverty, menstrual health, and the way that our modern view of periods has been twisted by adverts and marketing for sanitary products. I found the book rather light on content - too many anecdotes, too few facts and statistics, and a tendency to repeat and go over the same ground numerous times. There are also some glaring omissions. Barnett was brought up by a single mother, went to a girls' school and is married to a man - the book is (IMHO not coincidentally) short on content about the roles of dads, male teachers and female sex/life partners.
I thought this was a worthwhile book on an important topic, I wish it had taken itself a little more seriously.
7. American Dirt, Jeanine Cummins
My general rule in approaching a new read is that I read the book first and reviews afterwards - mainly to avoid spoilers but also to avoid having my reaction coloured by the opinions of others. As a result, I read this with only a vague knowledge of the controversy that surrounds it.
So, firstly, the book. It's an engaging, compelling thriller about a middle-class Mexican woman who goes on the run with her young son, after her journalist husband is murdered for writing an expose of a powerful drug cartel boss. Fearing that nowhere in Mexico will be safe from the cartel's connections and informers, they join the stream of migrants travelling north towards the US border. As thrillers often are, it's sometimes OTT and a little far-fetched (the silly subplot in which the drug lord is actually a friend of the journalist's widow weakens the story considerably) but generally it was pacy and gripping, and you could see that compassion for migrants was a key element in the author's mind when she set out to write the book.
Once I'd finished it, I started to read reviews, and caught up on the controversy: on the fact that Latinx writers have pointed out the lack of authenticity in the account, on the large advance paid to Cummins and the significant publicity raised for this book, while Latinx writers struggle for access to get their books published. On the fact that Cummins has been rather less than honest about her own experiences and connection to her story. I don't think I've read a better summing up of the issues than this from Roxane Gay
Creativity demands that anyone should be able to tell the kinds of stories they want, but how those stories are told matters, and creative freedom does not grant critical immunity. Perfection isn't the goal, but accuracy and authenticity are. When people tell stories beyond their subject position, all too often they do it poorly. The depictions are caricatures, rife with stereotypes, flat and distorted. The people whose communities are so poorly represented speak up but are rarely heard. Writers are allowed to make mistakes. Writers are allowed to write bad books. To critique American Dirt isn't about jealousy or censorship. It's about demanding better.