November 2012 Guest Editor Kate Mosse on The Women's Room...
The subject of forgotten - or hidden – women’s history is important to me as a writer, especially in Citadel. French’s The Women’s Room is one of those novels that most laid bare the reality of how many women lived – their loves and disappointments, expectations and secret language. A terrific story, a rattling good read, it’s also a reminder of how things that matter in life have – sometimes – both to be fought for and protected.
A landmark in feminist literature, THE WOMEN'S ROOM is a biting social commentary of a world gone silently haywire. Written in the 1970s but with profound resonance today, this is a modern allegory that offers piercing insight into the social norms accepted blindly and revered so completely.
'They said this book would change lives - and it certainly changed mine.' Jenni Murray
'The kind of book that changes lives' Fay Weldon
'Reading The Women's Room was an intense and wonderful experience. It is in my DNA Kirsty Wark
'The Women's Room took the lid off a seething mass of women's frustrations, resentments and furies; it was an angry book about the victimisation of women, about the need to change things from top to bottom; it was a declaration of independence Observer
Author
About Marilyn French
Marilyn French (1929 - 2009) was regarded as one of the greatest living feminist writers. Her controversial and provocative first novel THE WOMEN'S ROOM, published in 1977, sold 20 million copies worldwide and quickly became a classic of the women's movement. Marilyn French was also a literary critic. She died in May 2009.
.jpg)
