Feminist & General Fiction Genre Catalogue as of November 2014
Books are in alphabetical order of author’s last name. Details of books are in the following order:
Catalogue number
Author
Title
Description
Date published
Number of tapes
Reader’s name
039
Allende, Isabel
The stories of Eva Luna
Vibrant and colourful. 23 magical tales, of anger that turns to laughter and revenge that turns to love.
Published 1991
7 tapes
Read by Madeleine Walton
274
Barfoot, Joan
Gaining Ground
The story of a woman (Abra) who leaves her perfectly ordinary husband and children to live alone in the wilderness, in an attempt to recover or discover her own identity. She is tracked down and called to account by her daughter.
Published 1978
6 tapes
Read by Betty
001
Barfoot, Joan
Dancing in the Dark
A literary tour de force that stunningly portrays a housewife’s descent into madness and murder.
Published 1982
5 tapes
Reader unknown
016
Barker, Pat
Blow your House DownA novel about violence against women. A killer of prostitutes sets off a wave of terror and evil until one woman outlasts him and regains love.
Published 1984
4 tapes
Read by Mazzy036
Barnes, Lisa
Hand Me Downs
Meet Cass Blevins, she is only five going on six, but she knows a lot of things. This spirited child learns to say no to those who hurt her, and yes to herself.
Published 1985
5 tapes
Read by Kate Carmichael
029
Brantenberg, Gerd
Daughters of Egalia
Satire about the land of Egalia where it’s the wim who hold power, control the government and the economy while the menwim stay at home minding the children and curling their beard bows.
Published 1985
7 tapes
Read by Madeleine Walton
037
Cameron, Anne
The Journey
Anne runs away from her tyrannical uncle at 14. Sarah, a prostitute is driven out of town. They cross the Canadian frontier together in this adventure story. Feminist western based on a true account.
Published 1986
8 tapes
Read by Marlene Tise
012
Edwards, Nicky
Mud
An ex-peace campaigner back in London to write a play about World War 1 meets an 80-year-old woman. They explore why wars are started. A book which is challenging about war, peace, and bonds between women.
Published 1986
5 tapes
Read by Daniella Klein
101
Forster, Margaret
The Memory Box
After both her father and stepmother die, Catherine finally brings herself to open the box that her birth mother left for her before dying when Catherine was six months old. As she traces each item’s meaning and pieces together her mother’s short life story, Catherine herself changes.
Published 2000
8 tapes
Read by Jane
027
Franklin, Miles
My Brilliant Career
Sybilla, trapped in drudgery on her parents’ outback farm, loves the wild Australian bushland and its way of life but hates the bitter constraints and physical burdens which are her lot as a mere woman.
Published 1980
6 tapes
Read by Susan Richardson
017
French, Marilyn
The Women’s Room
Classic Feminist fiction. It’s 1968 – Mira Ward is lonely, depressed and in a mess. Having spent years subscribing to the American Dream of a husband, children and a spotless kitchen in suburbia, Mira decides it’s time for a change. Her world is about to be turned gloriously upside down.
Published 1978
17 tapes
Read by Mazi
033
Garden, Jane
The Summer After the Funeral
Teen novel. Athene Price has always been dutiful, clever, sweet-natured and, above all, calm. But then her father dies and just as if a stopper has been removed, all sorts of wilder emotions come bubbling forth.
Published 1977
3 tapes
Read by Mazzy
160
Gearheart, Sally Miller
The Wanderground
Feminist science fiction. The Wanderground is populated by self-sufficient women, who have developed their mental powers to be in tune with the natural and animal world. Their contacts with the nearby male-dominated city are dangerous but increasingly necessary.
Published 1985
6 tapes
Read by Elaine
032
Geller, Ruth
Triangles
A novel about a woman coming to terms with her Jewish identity in the context of her family, her relationship and her job
Published 1984
6 tapes
Read by Dorothy Barenholtz
043
Grekova, Irina
The Ship of Widows
In Moscow, five women live together by chance in 1943; each life has been torn apart by war. The apartment – the ‘ship’ – becomes the centre of their world. One tells their stories as they journey through decades.
Published 1985
5 tapes
Read by Jill Brooke
244
Jenson, Tovi
The Summer Book
A book about Bas, an elderly artist and her 6 year old grand daughter, while away the summer on a tiny island gulf of Finland. Gradually the 2 learn to adjust to each others’ fears, whims and yearnings for independence, and a fierce yet understated love emerges, one that not only encompasses the summer inhabitants, but the island itself.
Published 2003
4 tapes
Read by Doreen
104
Kay, Jackie
Trumpet
When jazz musician Billy Tipton died in 1989, the paramedics who tried to save his life also uncovered Tipton’s lifelong secret, that he was a woman. For 50-odd years he had fooled audiences, fellow musicians, his adopted children, and even some of his five wives. Now lesbian poet and playwright Jackie Kay takes on the same story by reimagining it as a novel.
Published 2000
7 tapes
Read by Jane
218
Kay, Jackie
Why Don’t You Stop Talking?
Short stories: Ordinary lives are transformed by secrets or trauma in a disturbingly familiar world where love and sex, death and family life cast long shadows. In these stories, women’s role as mothers, daughters and lovers are magically, comically or poignantly examined.
Published 2003
5 tapes
Read by Betty
121
Mendelsohn, Jane
I was Amelia Earhart
Biographical Fantasy. This limpid, not quite surreal story of the famous aviatrix and her drunken, handsome navigator is about, among other things, the wish for solitude and the opposing need for companionship.
Published 1997
3 tapes
Read by Elaine
122
Morrison, Toni
Paradise
Structured round 8 chapters, each bearing a woman’s name, each adding a different point of view to the narrative. Set in Ruby, a fictitious Black Town, founded by proud, racially pure men, who emerged from the fight against slavery only to find there was yet another hierarchy – this time based on gradations of skin colour – to keep them down. Yet the myth of Ruby’s own racial genealogy, its piety and self-righteousness is fragile, and the women who skirt the town’s boundaries referring to take refuge in their own company threaten to blow it apart.
Published 1999
8 tapes
Read by Elaine
010
Roberts, Michell
Visitation
A book highlighting the conflict between the desire to be a creative woman and the desire to love men. Heterosexual sex from a female point of view. Luscious, sensual writing.
Published 1983
5 tapes
Read by Debbie Griffith
171
Smith, Ali
Hotel World
Five people: four are living, three are strangers, two are sisters, one is dead. Forget Room Service, this is a life-affirming book about death, a death-affirming book about life.
Published 2001
5 tapes
Read by Elaine
040
Wilson, Barbara Ellen
Ambitious Women
Alison and Holly own and operate a print shop together. When Alison helps a woman who is wanted for a bombing, she is threatened with a grand jury investigation that could lead to a jail sentence.
Published 1982
7 tapes
Read by Marlene Tise
011
Wilson, Elisabeth
Prisons of Glass
Crystal, child of the Second World War, daughter of a broken home, with a degree and a lover in the 60’s, encounters the women’s movement, which stands her life on its head.
Published 1986
6 tapes
Read by Bernie Thorpe
116
Winterson, Jeanette
Boating for Beginners
Winterson has re-written the book of Genesis and turned it into a surreal Cecil B De Mille epic. Feminism and 20th century kitchenware run riot in the ancient city of Ur; Noah is Howard Hughes crossed with Frankenstein – an eccentric overseer of thriving capitalism who makes ‘God’ by accident out of a piece of gateau and a giant electric toaster.
Published 1985
4 tapes
Read by Lynne
021
Winterson, Jeanette
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
the story of a childhood filled with unusual character and events – her mother having picked her as a foundling to be a missionary. Witty, original and eccentric.
Published 1985
4 tapes
Read by Dawn Evans
123
Winterson, Jeanette
Written on the Body
Written on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story.
Published 1992
4 tapes
Read by Pat Collins
110
Woolf, Virginia
A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf’s blazing polemic on female creativity and the role of writers. The silent fate of Shakespeare’s imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman’s need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.
Published 2004
4 tapes
Read by Doreen
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