Effie Gray by Suzanne Fagence Cooper (Duckworth Overlook, £8.99)
Effie Gray by Suzanne Fagence Cooper (Duckworth Overlook, £8.99)
Cooper's meticulous and highly accessible biography of Ruskin's only wife, Scots-born Effie Gray, has been reprinted to coincide with the film starring Emma Thompson. It's very welcome, being also a fascinating account of the artistic milieu in which Effie found herself, as well as a compassionate telling of her love affair with John Everett Millais.
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate, £5)
Adichie grounds her feminist essay in the personal, following the example of others such as Caitlin Moran, and it is highly effective here, as she focuses on specific experiences of inequality while growing up in Nigeria. Her aim in her writing may be simple and straightforward, but it's not uncontroversial: to enlist men's help to achieve equality for women.
Hold Your Own by Kate Tempest (Picador Poetry, £9.99)
Ted Hughes Poetry prize winner (and Barclaycard Mercury Prize nominee) Tempest bases her poems in the real world, with a rhythm and rhyme that gives her work a more obvious musicality. Her opening poem here is the longest, an updating of the story of Tiresias, and is both politically and emotionally stark, while the rest explore human passions with a refreshing toughness.
The Captain's Daughter by Alexander Pushkin (NYRB, £7.99)
Pushkin's novel about a spoiled young nobleman who is rescued by a peasant in a snowstorm may have a real-life historical rebellion as its powerful back story, with a conservative ending about the necessity of class divisions and the status quo, but its pace and liveliness give it a modern feel, and its atmosphere is appealingly otherworldly.
Lesley McDowell
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