In an unnamed city, where to be interesting is dangerous, an eighteen-year-old woman has attracted the unwanted and unavoidable attention of a powerful and frightening older man, 'Milkman'. Her most recent non-fiction book, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myth was published in Oct 2020, and reached number 2 in the New York Times Bestseller chart. Ruthless raiders have massacred the inhabitants of Beran's Hill, including Gwen, the beloved wife of Declan Smith. After losing her fiancé in a shocking tragedy, Alex Morris moves from London to Edinburgh to make a break with the past.

Warrior” by Chibundu Onuzo (5/5) features a Biblical figure whose leadership and wisdom lead her people to victory in battle. and the contrast between the Festival weeks, with all the Fringe lunacies, and the somewhat staider betweentimes. I didn't enjoy every story though and some stories had an uncomfortable understone but all in all: this is great. I was determined to read this book, published this year to celebrate Virago Press’s 50th anniversary, this year, and I have got it in as hopefully my penultimate read. One activist tells Flock that in Smith’s Alabama county rape is epidemic, and in “The Furies” the incidents pile up, one outdoing the next in brutality.

I also had a hard time believing that Alex – merely 25 years old – had been a renowned theater director in London and that she was given the responsibility of challenged kids with no experience. In intimate character studies of her three subjects, Flock seeks to answer a question she had asked herself: Does fighting back lead to change? Here’s my conundrum: how do I rate a book that had me eagerly turning pages well into the evening…and yet left me feeling curiously flat by the time I finished?

I was invested in the book’s entirety as I waited (im)patiently for Kohda’s offering, which didn’t surface until near the end.Although a medical examiner listed 33 injuries to Smith’s body, including bite marks, when a police investigator was asked on the stand about the severity of her injuries, he said, “Honestly, I mean, I would have thought there would be more. I wasn't surprised that Mel killed her, to get revenge for Luke on Alex's behalf, but I really loved the twist nearer the end where Alex finally finds out Mel didn't just push her, but stabbed her while she pushed her: Alex had held on to the idea of it having been an accident, so to find out it had been a true murder after all, was delightfully shocking. As a reader, I knew that Alex was torn apart by her fiancée Luke’s death, yet I knew next to nothing about Luke (other than his profession) nor did I get a sense of them as a couple. The sense of women's complexity spills over in these pages, as the stories explore women's power, emotion, rage, calculation, flaws, humanity, and divinity, coming together to form a picture of the many traits, struggles and experiences we share across eras, cultures and continents, and yet the reader comes away remembering that for all that we have in common, everyone's story is wonderfully unique. Also loved the story by my talented friend Claire Kohda about a 'Tiger Mum', and various (Rachel Seiffart, Chibundu Onuzu) using true historical stories of women's protests.