When the ravages of Alzheimer’s leave an elderly woman marooned in painful memories of October 1950, her grandchild comes up with a creative strategy.
Latest editorial
Female polyphony
FIONA O’CONNOR marvels at a highly original collection of essays that explores the changing status and the meanings made by women’s voices
MEMORABLE: (L to R): Gertrude Stein in 1905 by Pablo Picasso and Nathalie Quintane in 2021
[(L to R) Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly/Public; domain DeuxPlusQuatre/CC]
New releases from Simone White, Brass Funkeys, and Souad Massi
SUE TURNER is compelled by a history that shows how far a country can turn in on itself to collude with abuses of power
RON JACOBS is persuaded by the parallel drawn between Charles Manson and Donald Trump
In this comparison of Britain pre- and post Thatcher, WILL POMORE applauds the analysis, but distrusts the solutions offered
MARIA DUARTE defends a solid, late-career Spielberg conspiracy flick that calls for empathy in a hostile world
Chicanes
By Clara Schulmann
Les Fugitives Press, £12.99
“BAD seed” is the literal translation of this book’s original French title, Zizanies. The title refers to troublesome women – disrupters, complainers, women who choose trouble rather than swallowing their anger.
In Chicanes, French art critic Clara Schulmann gathers numerous excellent artists and thinkers, women all, surrounding herself with their voices as she considers challenges to her own life.
The book is a seed catalogue of sorts; translated from the French and published by Les Fugitives, it brings together ideas and discourses from a wide range of arts: literature, film, painting and sculpture. The author delves into the voices of other women to consider her own fresh losses – a relationship break-up and a much loved job suddenly withdrawn. Commonplace happenings, Schulmann notes, but she uses them to devolve a multiform response in conversation with woman.
Similar stories
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
PETER MASON welcomes collected writings from Britain’s first black female publisher that focus on the place of black writers in literature
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes an exuberant blend of emotion and analysis that captures the politics and contrarian nature of the French composer