Things a Bright Girl Can Do Review Times Review

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave British women the right vote—though just women who were relatively wealthy and/or educated. (Information technology was only in 1928, with the Equal Suffrage Human activity, that women were given exactly the aforementioned voting rights as men.)

As my own modest way of celebrating this event, I decided to read Emerge Nicholls'due south Things a Bright Girl Can Do, which tells the story of three teenagers who take part in different means in the fight for women's suffrage (and who are as well affected in unlike ways by World State of war 1). May, who comes from a middle-course, progressive family, is curious, intellectual, fierce, and unapologetically queer—or, in her words, "Sapphic". Nell, whose family is working class, is placidity but good at fights and sports and all the things that boys do—in fact, she's queer too, though less certain virtually what it ways and how it works than May. (She read as trans to me, just of class considering of the time she lives in she doesn't label herself every bit such, and in any case I don't 100% know that she's trans or that the author meant her to be trans—which is why I'll refer to her with feminine pronouns.) Finally, Evely comes from an upper middle form family, only a conservative one, and she joins the suffragettes in frustration at the fact that her older blood brother Kit gets to do all kinds of stuff that's off-limits to her because of her sex—including, particularly, going to University. Evelyn gets arrested at a protest and goes on hunger strike, and when she's allow out from prison the War starts, and shortly afterwards her babyhood sweetheart, Teddy, goes off to fight. And Nell and May fall in love, but when the War starts and Nell's father is made to go and fight, May'due south outspoken pacifism and full general anti-militarism threatens to drive a wedge between them.

As yous may have guessed, this is one of those novels where each chapter is told from the perspective of a different grapheme (though in a few cases 2 characters share a single chapter, and we're occasionally given a glimpse into the listen of a minor character, similar Nell's blood brother Bill or Evelyn's footling sisters Hetty and Kezia). Normally, my experience of these kinds of novels is that I notice some of the characters more compelling and others less so, and I end up treating the capacity told from the less compelling characters' perspective like the tiresome vegetables that I have to eat in club for the meal to exist consummate. This was almost the instance with Things a Vivid Girl Can Do, only not quite.

Without a doubt, my favourite characters were Nell and May, considering I found it interesting to come across how their different class backgrounds affected how they lived and thought about both their own queerness and the War. Also, it'southward through their eyes that nosotros catch glimpses of the kind of history that gets erased in official narratives: the economic hardships that the start of the War forced on working grade families (factories that mostly exported stuff to Germany airtight, reservist fathers were called up to join the fight, etc.), the fashion the suffragettes helped these families (by organising food distribution, giving them jobs, etc.), what information technology was similar to exist a pacifist when so many people were in favour of the War, and so on.

Past dissimilarity, Evelyn's story is more conventional and seen-before—and I did wonder, sometimes, whether the novel would be improve off but telling May and Nell'southward story, or whether Nicholls should take replaced Evelyn'southward story with one that, similar May and Nell's, gave united states of america a glimpse into an aspect of those years that history books don't usually mention. Given the fact that the woman on the cover prototype seems to have dark-brown skin, and that Nell's capacity occasionally nod to her neighbours' ethnic diversity (she has a friend whose father is an Indian crewman, and when her female parent starts working at a toy manufacturing plant the dolls she makes are "in all the different colours one found in the East Terminate—white, brown and black"), it'due south hard not to wonder what this volume would be like if information technology had been enriched with the story of, say, a British-Asian daughter. Then once more, I realise that a novel can't do everything, and Nicholls (who is white) may not take been comfortable writing a story near a character of color—she may have been afraid of not treating the subject the right way. And, also, it'south it's difficult not to enjoy Evelyn and Teddy's company, even when they're at their everyman—or when their story is at its most obvious, or, in Teddy'due south example in the start one-half of the novel, when he'due south at his almost patronising (though not too far deep inside him there's a relatively woke dude struggling to come out). And Evelyn'southward hunger strike is one of the story's most memorable episodes. And, having seen Nicholls talk about the volume the other 24-hour interval, I see more conspicuously that Evelyn resists every relatively anticipated twist in her narrative, most effectively in the scene where she'southward supposed to see Teddy off at the railroad train station before he ships out to the continent—simply she'south likewise furious about how tiresome and predictable it is for her to practice such a thing to actually practice it "properly".

Indeed, I enjoyed all parts of this novel. I would recommend information technology to anyone who wants to learn more nearly the fight for women'due south suffrage, anyone who wants a more than disquisitional and historically accurate take on life on the Habitation Front, anyone who wants more than queer characters in historical fiction, and, well, anyone who enjoys a very good novel.  The volume's merely over 400 pages, just information technology felt much shorter—it's one of those stories where you lot think you lot'll only read 10 pages before bed and end upward reading fifty.

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Source: https://strangebookfellowsblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/review-things-a-bright-girl-can-do-by-sally-nicholls-2017/

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