August Book Club

Strong Female Character by Fern Brady

It's recap time on this month's book club read!

Recap time!
Disclaimer; I am so tired! My spoons are very low. So my brain may not have retained all the information. 😂😂 Please tell me if I'd forgotten things!!

So generally, the book was enjoyed a lot. We all liked her style of writing and her forthright way. We agreed this felt like it was the emotional vulnerability that we wanted from Kathy Burke's book.

Talking about the book led to us talking about mental health and neurodiversity generally as well. Assessment times and complications of having/not having a diagnosis. And the channel 4 documentary... which we all agreed, Channel 4 can fuck off please, thank you!

We talked about the challenges and stigma of diagnosis and found it interesting how  Fern Brady struggled with diagnosis. We hear often, and from multiple sources, that a diagnosis will be validating and explain a lot, but Fern's experience is an example of how it isn't always overwhelmingly positive and we really appreciated that level of honesty.

She was also really clear about frustrations of various things being explained away by vulnerability. As an example, it is apparently fairly common for autistic women to work as strippers, and often the conversation around that is that it's due to their vulnerability and it's exploitative. This book showed this in a different light. Her experience as a stripper didn't feel exploitative to her and a lot about the job appealed to her need for routine and structure.

Several members of the book club are autistic or suspect autism and talking about this book gave us all an opportunity to hear the different things that each of us found to be relatable and how that differed. It is clear that there is no one experience and even within neurodiversity, there is diversity!

We did put the neurotypicals on the spot and ask how they related to the book and it was clear that parts of her experience are universally relatable and those that weren't were really interesting to read.

Finally, there was a man in the book who was very much a green flag (not common with our book club choices!). Her partner is wonderfully supportive and absolutely the perfect person to have helped her in gettin her diagnosis and providing the support she needed with that. It's interesteing that most said that if we were in a relationship with a man who seemingly became violent and destroyed furniture and belongings regularly, that we don't think we would have been able to support him in the way he as abble to be there for Fern. We also spoke about her relationship with her parents andn how she spoke about her mum at the end of the book which was such a beautifully empathetic section.

Overall, an excellent read which was also recommended on audiobook as Fern Brady reads it herself.

Sparks ⚡️: 5/5

Coming Up

Tell me I'm Worthless, by Alison Rumfitt

There were some really excellent recommendations for the next meeting. We decided, given the news over the past month, that it would be nice to have a book club where we focus on trans stories and voices. The chosen book is Tell Me I'm Worthless, by Alison Rumfitt, but there were so many good suggestions that we are going to add a separate post with these in so we can share them all.

The vote was a very close one, and two of the shortlisted books, Hijab Butch Blues and Nevada, will be up for voting again in our next Second Chance book selection.

We'll be meeting to chat about the book on Thursday 17th September, at the Spark studio, and would love for you to join us. Get in touch, book online, or just turn up on the evening, whichever works for you. And remember, the first rule of book club is you're welcome whether you've read the book or not!