Roar
Cecelia Ahern
HarperCollins, £12.99, pp352
These 30 stories explore different versions of the female experience. From The Woman Who Slowly Disappeared to The Woman Who Thought Her Mirror Was Broken, each dissects with feminist precision female subjugation or empowerment. In one, a woman, pining for the past, eats photographs that fill her with a visceral sense of nostalgia. In another, an executive struggling with a work presentation falls through the floor and finds solace and courage in other women’s stories of insecurity and humiliation. Ranging from the ironic to the enraged, it is an impressive, timely and entertaining collection.
Educated
Tara Westover
Cornerstone, £14.99, pp400
Westover’s memoir about her childhood with Mormon parents and escape through self-education has won plaudits from critics and the powerful alike (Barack Obama chose it as one of his books of the summer), and with good justification. It’s a moving – at times harrowing – account of a childhood, dominated by a patriarchal, controlling father. Westover skilfully describes religious dogma and emotional claustrophobia; the portrayal of her family is restrained and even-handed. Her escape to college and her scholarships to Harvard and Yale are all the more inspiring for the traumas of her childhood.
Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere
Jeanette Winterson
Canongate, £7.99, pp80
Adapted from her Richard Dimbleby Lecture, this slim volume by award-winning the novelist and memoirist assesses how far women have come since getting the vote and the work that is still needed for true equality. Beginning with a brief history of the suffrage movement, Winterson examines the current landscape of gender inequality in medicine, education, equal pay, sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement. Turning her attention to the future, she argues that the lack of women in technology demands urgent attention and that “biology as destiny seems very old fashioned indeed”.
• To order Roar for £11.43, Educated for £10.99, or Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere for £5.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
