Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History by Philippa Gregory

2 reviews

kamrynkoble's review

dark informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

I feel accomplished after reading this book (in twenty days! It feels longer than that), so I can’t imagine how Gregory felt after finishing it. I’m a long-time fan of her novels, and saw this on my local library’s new nonfiction shelf. I immediately grabbed it, and only had to renew it once.

First of all, the package—I LOVE the cover. It’s filled with black-and-white images and several inserts of color photographs. It’s hefty and solid and I’m glad I got to hold the physical copy even if I did a fair amount of reading on the ebook version. I imagine this would be good in audio, and maybe less intimidating. 

Overall, this was fascinating. I learned so much. It is explicitly about the UK, and really only mentions other countries when it’s relevant to the UK. I’d love to read a similar tome about American women (and we’ve been around for a lot less time than English women so it wouldn’t have to be as dense). 

This focuses a lot on work, war, laws, punishment, religion, violence against women, and LGBT+ topics (women loving women as it’s called in every section and intersex/transgender people). I could’ve had a little more about royalty (I know, this is called “normal women” but they were so important. Victoria received more than Elizabeth), fashion, childbirth (it was mentioned in some sections but completely ignored in others), courting/dating and romance, and other similar topics. Only the afterword really spoke of any common thread of sisterhood/womanhood/girlhood, etc. I could’ve used a bit more of that narrative throughout, but that’s a personal opinion. 

Unfortunately, I don’t think I leave remembering any one specific woman whom I didn’t know of before reading this. I would’ve been interested in more focused profiles for each segment, whether well-known or not (or both).

All in all this is a sometimes dry, extremely dense, and even more extremely well-researched overview of 900 years of English women’s history. If you’re interested in the above-mentioned topics, this one is worth a read. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Misogyny, Rape, Sexism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Xenophobia, Antisemitism, Murder, Pregnancy, War, and Classism

Moderate: Child death, Racism, Transphobia, Medical content, Kidnapping, Abortion, Lesbophobia, Alcohol, Colonisation, and Dysphoria

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Genocide, Infertility, Infidelity, Miscarriage, and Racial slurs

ssione5's review

informative

5.0

Skip what you need to, but this is in my top 3 nonfictions of all time. Brilliantly researched, absolutely fantastic. The brutality is directly quoting sources from the times and makes clear the seeds of modern patriarchy and misogyny. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Medical content, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Abortion, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, Dysphoria, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, Deportation, and Pandemic/Epidemic