Mary's Feminist Fiction Reading Group

Welcome to the wonderful Feminist Fiction Reading Group! A place to discover and enjoy a range of titles and themes lovingly hand picked by Mary. Woven together by feminist perspectives and critique, we will be discussing everything from unsung classics to contemporary literary fiction.

This month's pick is by Scottish literary legend Ali Smith. You may be most familiar with her seasonal quartet series, but How to be both sprung her into the spotlight when it won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2015. A genre bending novel exploring art, gender, and grief through two interconnected narratives: a 1460s Renaissance artist and a modern-day teenager. The book is designed to be read in either order, with some editions starting with the "camera" (contemporary) story and others with "eyes" (historical), creating a unique, dual-perspective reading experience... excellent discussions await!

How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s.

Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real - and all life's givens get given a second chance.

There’s no need to prepare or pressure to contribute at all - just bring your lovely self - but do feel free to mention a particular passage or character that you enjoyed during your reading.

Each entry place costs £5, fully redeemable as a voucher towards a copy of the book. We hope you’ll join us for some great conversation, and perhaps some baked goods!

Our Previous book group books include:

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Sula by Toni Morrison
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
Queens of Sarmiento Park by Camila Sosa Villada
Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq
Hagstone by Sinead Gleeson?
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
Long Petal of the Sea by Isabelle Allende