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maree_k's review against another edition
challenging
informative
medium-paced
3.0
I’m a huge fan of Garner but this book hasn’t aged well. I can’t count the times I thought “what the hell was she thinking?” while reading it, and Garner comes across as whiny and out of touch. Still, it gave me a good perspective on the changes in thinking and knowledge and the amount of research that’s been done on the topic of sexual harassment in the past 28 years. And even when she’s whiny, Garner writes beautifully.
roguepingu's review against another edition
5.0
I think this is an excellent book but I did not enjoy reading it.
I put off reading The First Stone for ages because I thought I would hate it. And – for the record – I don’t. (Although neither do I like it). I actually think Garner’s motivations and aims for this book are admirable. I found her self-interrogation an important insight into a point of view which I had never encountered in such intimate detail before. As such, I believe that the critiques of the book’s lack of ‘objectivity’ are missing the point. Nonetheless, I disagreed with most (but by no means all) of Garner’s stances in the book. I won’t go into detail on those disagreements here because that nitpicking work has already been over-done and most of my objections were articulated in one way or another in the additional material at the end of this particular edition.
Speaking of which, I don’t think I could have stomached reading this “reportage” as well as I did if it had not been for the design of this edition. The 25th anniversary edition has a foreword provided by Leigh Sales which prepared me well for the main text. It underlined what I would find to be Garner’s faults but also highlighted what I, too, found to be the positive points of Garner’s questioning. In other words, it provided a few firm posts to help me navigate through what I found to be a frustrating narrative. The back end material – an afterword by Garner’s biographer, a 1995 interview with Garner, and Garner’s 1995 address on the book – was a helpful means of de-briefing and figuring out what I had just read.
Would highly recommend reading this book regardless of what one thinks of Garner’s views. I would say that this book still stands as relevant today but perhaps would have been written in a very different way in a 2021 context.
I put off reading The First Stone for ages because I thought I would hate it. And – for the record – I don’t. (Although neither do I like it). I actually think Garner’s motivations and aims for this book are admirable. I found her self-interrogation an important insight into a point of view which I had never encountered in such intimate detail before. As such, I believe that the critiques of the book’s lack of ‘objectivity’ are missing the point. Nonetheless, I disagreed with most (but by no means all) of Garner’s stances in the book. I won’t go into detail on those disagreements here because that nitpicking work has already been over-done and most of my objections were articulated in one way or another in the additional material at the end of this particular edition.
Speaking of which, I don’t think I could have stomached reading this “reportage” as well as I did if it had not been for the design of this edition. The 25th anniversary edition has a foreword provided by Leigh Sales which prepared me well for the main text. It underlined what I would find to be Garner’s faults but also highlighted what I, too, found to be the positive points of Garner’s questioning. In other words, it provided a few firm posts to help me navigate through what I found to be a frustrating narrative. The back end material – an afterword by Garner’s biographer, a 1995 interview with Garner, and Garner’s 1995 address on the book – was a helpful means of de-briefing and figuring out what I had just read.
Would highly recommend reading this book regardless of what one thinks of Garner’s views. I would say that this book still stands as relevant today but perhaps would have been written in a very different way in a 2021 context.
azazed's review against another edition
1.0
this got recommended to me and I thoroughly hated it because I felt like she took the side of the perpetrator. I haven't been able to read any of her other books since.
erinstewart's review against another edition
4.0
I don't really agree with Garner but her points around women portraying themselves as victims rather than agents is as important today as ever. Solutions to the problems facing women are complex and the changes we demand of others mark only the start of women's empowerment. Good change, after all, is endogenous.
I also get Garner's frustration of not being able to talk to the central women and being locked out of the feminist crowd. Although she vilifies this group it is clear that her work is subjective and even imaginative when it comes to their characterisation. It is easy to place these musings as conjecture because Garner is so transparent with her limitations. This may not be reassuring for those she writes about but I don't feel like I 'know' the figures from the book, only how Garner saw them from afar.
Plus, you know, Garner is one of Australia's best writers so she could be arguing for more umbrellas up Swanston Street and I'd still attend to each word.
I also get Garner's frustration of not being able to talk to the central women and being locked out of the feminist crowd. Although she vilifies this group it is clear that her work is subjective and even imaginative when it comes to their characterisation. It is easy to place these musings as conjecture because Garner is so transparent with her limitations. This may not be reassuring for those she writes about but I don't feel like I 'know' the figures from the book, only how Garner saw them from afar.
Plus, you know, Garner is one of Australia's best writers so she could be arguing for more umbrellas up Swanston Street and I'd still attend to each word.