Has anyone else read it? We chose it for our feminist, mainly lesbian, totally GC reading group, age range 51-66, and no one could read beyond the first few chapters because they felt so uncomfortable with it. I've never known such a strong and consistent response to anything we've read. Most of us plug away to the end, come what may, but we all gave up on Hags because of the underlying sense that the male gaze and male validation mattered to the author.
It's difficult to discuss a book when you haven't got to the end because you can't bear it, but we know Victoria Smith is younger than us and we can only assume that her readers would be women like her — 40s, feminist-lite. We'd all come up a decade or two earlier, with Germaine Greer leading the way, preparing us for the brutal reality of being a younger woman and then in later books, an older woman. Misogyny and ageism has never taken us by surprise. We are so much more radical having grown up in an openly sexist, anti-women world.
I know that being critical of other women isn't 'nice', but as I'd suggested the book and women and splashed out £15-20 on it, it stings me. Wish we'd only paid 99p.