A review by callum_mclaughlin
The Victorian Chaise Longue by Marghanita Laski

4.0

This was a brilliantly ambiguous and claustrophobic little read. For me, it threw up fascinating ideas about the fine line between ecstasy and ruin, the toxicity of being supressed, and the frivolousness of time; how in one era, a woman's actions could be her making, but in another, they could spell her very ruin. With subtlety, Laski also shrewdly questions just how much progress women had made in gaining autonomy over their bodies, minds and actions by the time of the book's writing, despite comparative improvements over the past; a theme still relevant to this day.