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My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein: A Fiction
‘In one short and sly book after another, [Levy] writes about characters navigating swerves of history and sexuality, and the social and personal rootlessness that accompanies both’ Atlantic
Who was Gertrude Stein?
Avant-garde American poet and art collector who made her home in Paris, godmother of modernism, queer icon, friend to Picasso and Hemingway, self-declared genius ― a writer who has baffled readers and critics for a century.
And why does she matter?
The narrator of Deborah Levy’s latest, dazzling fiction has gone to Paris to find out. There she meets Eva with the blinding gaze, an artist in a long-distance marriage, and Fanny, a sexually adventurous financier; together they cook, walk, read and argue late into the nights.
As Paris sweeps her along in its ceaseless flow, she thinks – about what we have to lose to become modern, navigating anxiety, living with uncertainty, angry fathers, making a new life in another country, art and language – how all these things looked to Gertrude Stein in the early days of the twentieth century, and how they look to her and her friends in the early twenty-first.
This is a book about how we put ourselves together― an exhilarating, witty, cosmopolitan meditation on the pleasures and challenges of friendship, desire and living with other people. But it is also crashes through genre to create an inspired portrait of Stein herself: a writer who experimented fearlessly with a new way of living and who wrestled herself free from the nineteenth century to invent a brand-new way of looking at the world.
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From £13.93My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein: A Fiction
From £13.93 -
Bimbo: Ditch the Labels. Find Your Voice. Reclaim Your Confidence.
‘Ashley is a much-needed force.’ Jameela Jamil
‘Essential reading for every woman’ Em Clarkson
‘Raw and gloriously unapologetic … a rallying cry for every woman’ Carol Vorderman
‘A smart, brave and unapologetic reclaiming of female power’ Katie Piper OBE
Bossy. Frigid. Spinster. Sl*t. Mumsy. Milf. Bimbo. The English language has a seemingly infinite number of judgemental and hypocritical words to describe women and their life choices. We can’t win, no matter what we do.
Whether it’s on the sofa of ITV’s This Morning or online, Ashley James is a fierce advocate for women. In Bimbo, she unpacks the labels that box women in, and the systems that keep them there. From ‘bossy’ little girls, ‘tarty’ teens, to mothers who ‘let themselves go’, and ‘left-on-the-shelf’ single women, Ashley dissects the systems that try to confine us and asks: what if we broke free?
Told through raw personal stories, humour and with a fierce feminist lens, this is a battle cry for every woman who’s ever felt too much ― or not enough. This is a call to women to stop shrinking, stop competing, and start rising ― together.
This is a book to be shared, discussed, and cherished, and a beacon of hope for a better future.
‘Ignore this Bimbo at your peril.’ Ellie Taylor
‘The book I’ve been waiting for my whole life.’ Bryony Gordon
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From £8.99 -
The Eights: The captivating debut historical novel following the first women to study at Oxford University
‘Entertaining and moving…I came to love these four women as though they were my sisters’ TRACY CHEVALIER
‘I ADORED it. What a fantastic read. My book of the year’ JILL MANSELL
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They knew they were changing history.
They didn’t know they would change each other.Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.
Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Beatrice, politically-minded daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way – and her own friends – for the first time. Socialite Otto fills her room with extravagant luxuries but fears they won’t be enough to distract her from her memories of the war years. And quiet, clever, Marianne, the daughter of a village vicar, arrives bearing a secret she must hide from everyone – even The Eights – if she is to succeed.
But Oxford’s dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.
The Eights is a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination, courage, and what it means to come of age in a world that is forever changed.
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‘Beautifully captures the power of friendship … A pleasure to read’ PIP WILLIAMS, author of A Dictionary of Lost Words
‘I so enjoyed The Eights’ CLARE CHAMBERS, author of Small Pleasures
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From £7.99