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A review by annauq
Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls
4.0
Man i was sooooo excited when this came into our bookshop bc QUEER!!! SUFFRAGETTES!!! and i was not disappointed.
This was a really entertaining, lovely way to finish off the year. It’s fresh, it’s gripping, and thoroughly modern ya take on the historical novel. Issues of class and sexuality (race is... conspicuously absent) are explored with surprising depth, in the sense that they were talked about in exactly the opposite way i was expecting. One character cheerfully declares herself a Sapphist to another girl, and they gleefully make out without involving much of the usual angst. A mother is a “bolshevik sympathiser”; Suffragettes and Suffragists are discussed equally and at length; and the impact of world war 1 on women is laid out incredibly nuanced. Oh and there’s a lil bit of stuff about gender identity in it too. And toxic masculinity, and all the other good stuff.
14 year old me would have loved, loved, this book. 22 year old me still very much enjoyed it, and will be recommending it to lots and lots of 13+ year olds.
Mostly tho: QUEER SUFFRAGETTES WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE!!!
This was a really entertaining, lovely way to finish off the year. It’s fresh, it’s gripping, and thoroughly modern ya take on the historical novel. Issues of class and sexuality (race is... conspicuously absent) are explored with surprising depth, in the sense that they were talked about in exactly the opposite way i was expecting. One character cheerfully declares herself a Sapphist to another girl, and they gleefully make out without involving much of the usual angst. A mother is a “bolshevik sympathiser”; Suffragettes and Suffragists are discussed equally and at length; and the impact of world war 1 on women is laid out incredibly nuanced. Oh and there’s a lil bit of stuff about gender identity in it too. And toxic masculinity, and all the other good stuff.
14 year old me would have loved, loved, this book. 22 year old me still very much enjoyed it, and will be recommending it to lots and lots of 13+ year olds.
Mostly tho: QUEER SUFFRAGETTES WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE!!!