Week 1… Again
Last year I did a fairly good job at posting each week but I forgot 2 weeks in a row and then things snowballed. I can’t catch up - at least, I don’t think I can post good reviews after 6 months of distance. In the infamous words of Paramore, we pick up and start again.
This week I worked (too much, annoyingly), spent time with my niece (too little, but lovingly), read my silly little books and watched my silly little movies. I’m writing this tucked up in my room, a crackling candle next to me, sipping a Pepsi Max, determined that this year will be the year I post consistently each week.
Hark by Alice Vincent
I’ve listened/read Vincent’s previous works (Why Women Grow and Rootbound). I liked both; Vincent is a good writer. She really hones in on one subject, pins it down and examines it under a microscope in ways I couldn’t have anticipated or thought of.
Hark is all about sound. Vincent previously reviewed music, and spend her teenage years listening to music, scraping money to attend gigs, listening to music in her room with her friends. As time has passed, Vincent has stopped listening to music, or anything really. Sound, and the absence of sound, has become her normal.
Framed in the lens of her matrescence (having just giving birth to her first child), Vincent talks about sound, our relationship to sound amd how we listen (or don’t listen), and her reigniting her relationship with sound. The chapters on sound are broken up by chapters about motherhood, her child and coping with the changes to her life. I don’t think my words can give this book justice, but it was excellent!
Rating: ★★★★★
Why Did You Stay? by Rebecca Humphries
It seems embarrassing to say, having now read the book, but I actually did not know who Rebecca Humphries was, or what had happened between her and her ex-partner. Why Did You Stay? is all about the day Humphries relationship (and life) changed. Her partner is caught having an affair with his dance partner on Strictly, and she is suddenly thrust into the limelight. As she gains space and perspective from her ex partner, she begins to see the relationship for what it was - abusive. This book specifically deals with the immediate aftermath of the break up, and her examination of why she stayed, her thoughts and feelings, her desperation to keep her relationship and the ways in which she was gaslit into believing she was the problem.
I think this book was incredibly honest, even painfully so. At times, it doesn’t paint Humphries in the best way. But does it need to? Do we need victims to be perfect? We don’t. I admire Humphries for writing this book, and explaining exactly how and why a person can stay in an abusive relationship.
Rating: ★★★☆☆