A question for literary sleuths

Alba de Cespedes: Forbidden Notebook

Nasty women through the ages

Not only are women frail and ill-suited to hardship, but when they slip the leash they become vicious, scheming and hungry for power.

Siri Hustvedt : The Summer Without Men

Mia and Boris have been married for thirty years.  When he says he wants to have a ‘pause’ she has a complete mental collapse and lands in hospital.

He did not say, ‘I don’t ever want to see you again’ or ‘It’s over’, but after thirty years of marriage ‘pause’ was enough to turn me into a lunatic whose thoughts burst, ricocheted and careened into on another…

Heidi Sopinka : Utopia

Heidi Sopinka’s second novel is set in the LA art world of 1978. This is the time of Andy Warhol and Valerie Solanas (who tried to kill him). It begins at a party, with a young woman in a room breast feeding her seven-week-old baby. Not just any young woman, but Romy, performance artist and part of a glamourous power couple with Billy, some years older, and recipient of Guggenheim awards and shows in Europe. Romy is ripped apart by anger and jealousy. She feels that Billy will always be more famous and respected than she is because she is a female. And this is the theme of this story; the battle between the sexes.

Mothers, Fathers, and Others : Siri Hustvedt

In her latest book of essays Siri Hustvedt ranges far. She speaks of her family and her early life. She examines the power of art and of reading. She looks back at favourite books like Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights, she thinks about what we might be drawn to read during a pandemic, she plays around with the words of a famous story-teller, Scheherazade, and she examines the life of a prolific artist and journal writer, Louise Bourgeois. She also, as so often with her, tries to tease apart the debate about the relative merits of male and female art/writing.