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A review by stefhyena
Rosie Little's Cautionary Tales for Girls. Danielle Wood by Danielle Wood
medium-paced
2.75
It wasn't quite what I expected. I thought the title would be more tongue in cheek and the book shake things up more. The blurb says "thoroughly modern" though to be fair that was back in 2006.
But still the traces of conservatism were a bit strange. It was that sort of liberal feminist "girl is independent by sleeping with a lot of men and being resilient when they all turn out to be shit" thing that I tried to like at the time but didn't quite manage it even then. That hasn't aged well. You could be just as sex positive but mix things up more. But also sex is just sex. Quite a lot of the women/girls in the book were punished one way or another, hence I suppose the "cautionary" but I wasn't really sure what the message was apart from "it's shit to be a woman" but I don't think the author thought she was saying that.
I'll be honest I had to push myself through it. What I did really love was the traces of Australia in a few of the chapters. It was definitely an Australian book despite being not about that. And that was nice.
Also let's be fair I have a few times shown that I don't always "get" short stories.
But still the traces of conservatism were a bit strange. It was that sort of liberal feminist "girl is independent by sleeping with a lot of men and being resilient when they all turn out to be shit" thing that I tried to like at the time but didn't quite manage it even then. That hasn't aged well. You could be just as sex positive but mix things up more. But also sex is just sex. Quite a lot of the women/girls in the book were punished one way or another, hence I suppose the "cautionary" but I wasn't really sure what the message was apart from "it's shit to be a woman" but I don't think the author thought she was saying that.
I'll be honest I had to push myself through it. What I did really love was the traces of Australia in a few of the chapters. It was definitely an Australian book despite being not about that. And that was nice.
Also let's be fair I have a few times shown that I don't always "get" short stories.