Helen Aherne

Have just purchased a wonderful book from our amazing local independent bookshop, Browsers Bookshop (www.browsers-bookshop.co.uk).  The title: Women Who Read Are Dangerous  by Stefan Bollmann, jumped out at me from the bookshelf, made me smile and of course I couldn't leave it there.  The Foreword is by Karen Joy Fowler and is as enjoyable as the book itself. Gorgeously reproduced pictures are interspersed throughout the book which range in tone from "pious to scandalous, charming to mysterious" (Nancy G. Heller, PhD, author of Women Artists:  An Illustrated History). All the pictures, even the nudes, are of women reading.  Each, it would seem, immersed in her own secret life.  And this was what, historically, according to the book, raised alarm - that through reading a woman could indulge in a secret life!  "Should they be permitted, even within the confines of their own imaginations, to be unchaste?" asks Karen Joy Fowler in her Foreword. So wh

I pull my car in to the side of the road, turn the volume up several notches, and smile as I listen, my head laid back against the headrest. I’m listening to Mary Black, iconic Irish singer and songwriter, who is being interviewed by Siobhann Tighe as part of Women’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 today.   They are talking about the woman’s role in Ireland, as defined by the Constitution of the 1930s, and the changes that have taken place since. Mary Black, with her clear, don’t-give-a-toss voice has formed the background to my life for as long as I can remember.   I listen as she recounts her life in Ireland of the 60s and the role expected of women of the time.   I empathise fully with her, mine being similar of my mother always at home, the house warm when I came home from school, and food on the table.   This was ‘her job’ and neither my brother nor I could have envisaged life in our home any other way. And, as Mary says, when her mother had to work outside the home to earn extra money,