The Slow Road to Tehran, Rebecca Lowe

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Rebecca Lowe was not an experienced cyclist when she decided to cycle from the UK to Tehran, she did not train for it, and she wasn’t in peak physical fitness. Nonetheless, she was confident that she could succeed in her mission and return home safely. Her friends and family were less convinced. When the time came to set off she had her own doubts, but set off valiantly, not having researched the route much beyond drawing a line on a map. The prologue explains the origin of her interest in the Middle East, but also acknowledges the privilege she benefits from in being able to travel in and out of areas where others do not have the same freedom. On her journey she is met with kindness and generosity and these uncomfortable feelings of unearned privilege rise again, although she admits it does not stop her accepting the offers of help.

As she travels first through Western Europe, across the Balkans, through Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and many more, she engages with the locals. To begin with her conversations tend to focus on views of Islam and refugees, but as she rides deeper into countries that the news in the UK has convinced us all are entirely dangerous, she sees the frustration of local business owners that the whole country has been tarnished with a bad reputation when most of it is completely safe. People are generous in sharing their views and homes with her and some of her own misconceptions are redressed. In some countries it is dangerous for people to be seen talking to her as a journalist but many do nonetheless. She is struck by the courage of many who she meets, and again feels the contrast between the risks involved. 

She finds the bureaucracy of different countries frequently frustrating, and comes to appreciate the ease with which she was able to cross borders while in the Schengen area. She finds it particularly difficult leaving Cairo with endless hold ups and misdirections. She deals with over-zealous officials with a confidence she doesn’t always feel and mostly succeeds, even if it takes a few attempts. Another difficulty she encounters in Egypt is that the police go everywhere with her, and although this occasionally proves to be useful it makes her uncomfortable. At one point a tuk tuk driver is brutally beaten by them when he smacks her backside while driving past. She takes some pleasure in this having experienced a lot of sexual harassment, but eventually asks them to stop. 

Lowe is a self-deprecating, humorous writer who writes with honesty and humility about her experiences. Her year long journey fits into a reasonably slim book, and there is a lot packed in to its almost four hundred pages. It can at times feel like a whistle stop tour, but she does take the time to focus in on certain experiences, histories, and people, giving the reader a broad sense of the countries she passes through. Certainly this is not a comprehensive guide to any of the areas, but it is a very human story. Everywhere she goes she seems to have a friend or a friend of a friend, or a willing local she connects with online to host her and share a slice of their life. We see many contradictions and varying views on the way their countries are run and perceived, learn about the food, traditions, and customs, as well as the day to day struggles and joys. This is a rich tapestry which serves as a wonderful jumping off point for those who want to delve deeper into some of the issues and histories Lowe raises. 

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If Tomorrow Doesn't Come, Jen St. Jude

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This post is part of the WriteReads blog tour for the novel. Thank you to The WriteReads and Penguin for providing me with a review copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

It’s Avery Byrne’s nineteenth birthday, and she is not intending to survive it. Her plans are disrupted when she receives a call from her best friend Cass telling her an asteroid is headed to Earth and they all only have nine days left to live. She soon finds herself battling to get to Cass and get them both back home in Kilkenny, her roommate Aisha and lecturer Dr. Talley in tow. Their presence acts as a point of anxiety for Avery as they both know dark secrets that she desperately wants to hide from her family.

The narrative bounces between the countdown to the end of the world and the history of Avery, revealing her challenges with her sexuality, strictly religious parents, mental health, and keeping up with her classes and sport. In high school she had been a star on the soccer team and a straight A student, but when she arrives at Eaton she struggles to thrive while her mental health makes her very existence unbearable. Her struggles with depression are painfully realistic and it’s heartbreaking to see how little of her light she sees. Convinced her loved ones would be better off without her, and certain there will come a time when she is no longer around, she keeps herself from getting too close to her nephew, not wanting him to become attached to her. The day Avery was born her aunt Devin killed herself, and she sees it almost as an inevitability that she will do the same. She has been told how much she looks like Devin which only reinforces the idea that they have a connection, a shared destiny.

The thought of being stuck in a bunker with her family fills her with dread because she isn’t sure she’d be able to keep the carefully constructed mask in place, that they’d see her completely. Can the last few days before the collision make her want to keep living, make her feel worth the affection of those around her?

If there’s one person who can help her turn things around, it’s Cass. They have been best friends for years but Avery’s secret feelings for her add tension. The last time she saw Cass she told her she hated her, but when it comes to it, there’s nobody either of them would rather be with. Cass has been openly gay for years, she is vibrant, beautiful, and fun, and Avery feels herself pale beside her. You root for them to be together but the flashbacks show how often they’ve miscommunicated their feelings and hurt each other. This isn’t an idealised relationship, it’s very relatable and it has the potential to help Avery feel at home in the world.

The apocalyptic world they are living in is intense. Cities are dangerous, planes are grounded, and suburbs are abandoned. Her brother and sister-in-law, neighbours to her parents, fall apart under the pressure of trying to protect their son from the reality of what is happening. An apocalypse party brings Avery and Cass face-to-face with a spurned classmate who is looking for revenge, and all the normal rules that guide life are broken in this terrifying new world.

This is a deeply emotional read. It is written absorbingly and the characters all feel believable. The emotions and challenges of first love will be relatable both to those reading in the throes of adolescence and those reading with the advantage of age. A compelling read, and one that you might want to keep a box of tissues to hand for. 

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Spotlight - Straight Expectations by Calum McSwiggan

 Today the WriteReads blog tour kicks off for Straight Expectations by Calum McSwiggan, out on 4th May! Find out more below.

'I want what the straight kids have. Even just for a couple of days . . .'
Seventeen-year-old Max might be out and proud but he's usually too busy checking his nail polish to
check his privilege. So, when he says he wishes he could have the 'easy' life straight kids enjoy, Max gets more than he bargained for. He wakes up to find his wish has come true - not only have his feelings for boys vanished, so has his lifelong best friend Dean.
With his world turned upside down and relationships in tatters, can Max find his way back to the life he took for granted, and maybe even win the heart of the guy he thought could never be his . . .?

Calum McSwiggan is an author, presenter, and LGBTQ+ advocate. He's worked for Attitude magazine, written for the Metro, Gay Times and PinkNews, and was recently placed in the Guardian's list of the 50 most influential LGBTQ+ figures. Putting LGBTQ+ stories at the heart of everything he does, he's produced award-winning films that have been showcased at film festivals around the world and
racked up over 10 million views on his online videos.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante

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As Elena prepares to marry a University professor and move with him to Florence, she returns to Naples where her recent book is the talk of the town. Lila is working in a sausage factory where conditions are far from ideal, teaching her son to read, and studying with her partner at night. Their lives feel alien to each other and there is resentment and regret. Whenever they talk there is an undercurrent of tension. It is rare for them to reveal all to each other and they cling to and abandon each other as their circumstances change. Elena is afraid something will happen which will prevent her from escaping the life Lila is still living, who is being worn down by it, beginning to doubt her own abilities which are being quashed by lack of opportunity and the lack of time to do anything but work hard to keep her family afloat. For Elena, her attempts to create a new life for herself make her distant with her family and she becomes unaware of what is happening in their lives.

She struggles with the reception of her book, allowing reviews to colour her own opinion of it, swinging with every contradictory opinion aired. Eventually, she realises the real challenge is everyone from her old life having read it and judged it to be vulgar. When she writes a second novel and shares it with her mother-in-law and editor she is disheartened to find that they consider it unpublishable. The content being based around her experiences it is not just a rejection of her work but of her and the past which she is forever trying to escape.

Her relationship with Pietro is not a supportive one. He leaves her to manage their small children and their home, roles which she feels make her lose her sense of self and evaporate her creativity. She doesn’t share her writing with him, and when Nino reappears in their lives he points out that her lack of output has a lot to do with Pietro not taking on any of the burden of caring for the family. He prioritises his own work and does not seem to consider that Elena also needs mental space and time to achieve her potential.

Lila’s relationship with Enzo has some differences. She works until she is exhausted but Enzo is proud of her and treats her like an intellectual equal, realising that they need to work together to achieve their goals. Ultimately, they become successful and forge a new way of life for themselves. Earlier in the novel, she began to feel that her efforts were futile when seeing the grandson of her former teacher exceed her own child’s abilities in less time. ‘What a useless struggle to make Gennaro become smart. The child was already losing, he was being pulled back and she couldn’t hold on to him.’ This heartbreaking passage reveals the deep-seated advantage that privilege provides from a young age, and highlights how hard both Elena and Lila have to work to rise above the disadvantage they were dealt.

This third instalment is just as powerful as those which came before. We see some new, not always pleasant, aspects of Elena’s character and witness the world around them shift with civil unrest, making even the university halls feel unsafe. The friendship between Lila and Elena remains difficult, competitive, and at times toxic. It is sad to see them feel compelled to compete when they would be far stronger supporting each other. There is far more connecting them than separating them but they can’t seem to get past feelings of hurt and judgment to open up to each other and accept help. This is a compelling novel that considers a broad sweep of gender and social issues and leaves you desperate to dive into the fourth and final book, while simultaneously not wanting your time with these characters to end. 

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Capital of the Mind: How Edinburgh Changed the World, James Buchan

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Buchan’s book promises to demonstrate how Edinburgh transformed itself from a city rife with poverty, terrible living conditions, and economic strife, to one whose political, philosophical, scientific, and artistic efforts would impact global approaches to these topics during the early eighteenth century. It covers key figures such as David Hume, Robert Burns, and Adam Smith with varying degrees of detail. Buchan’s writerly flair comes through, bringing the city to life, but this is not a book without substance, it is clearly well researched and bedded in primary source material.

To the modern lay reader, the role of Edinburgh in the development of medical sciences and the unfortunate consequence of grave robbers being prevalent is probably the most commonly known aspect of the city during the period, but as Buchan shows, there was so much more to its development than this. I was struck particularly by his arguments on the prominence of philosophers, however, this is a very Edinburgh focussed book, and although it is explained how significant work happening there was, we see very little of how it was received globally or indeed how their progress impacted on work in the field more broadly.

In an interesting twist, Buchan points out briefly how by the late eighteenth century many negative aspects of the city had actually further worsened. Drunkenness, executions, and poverty were commonplace, with the New Town having forced out many long-term residents of the city and as a consequence ghettoes formed. Nonetheless, the main focus is on the great achievements of the Scots during this time, despite the challenging background due to tensions with the English. This is an interesting read, but something about it made it very difficult for me to absorb the information. 

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Life After Life, Kate Atkinson

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11th February, 1910, a baby is born and dies before it’s able to take its first breath.

11th February, 1910, a baby is born and is saved.

This baby will become Ursula Todd, and she will live many lives. Sometimes her death is easy to circumvent in a future version - a reluctance to swim in the sea, a decision to leave a toy that’s been thrown mercilessly through her bedroom window by an unkind sibling. Others, the Spanish flu, the Blitz, prove far more difficult to survive. Ursula lives an extraordinary life, dimly aware of former lives yet only ever in a hazy way, in a feeling, occasionally in a recollection that has never occurred in that version. She is sent to a psychiatrist as a child after pushing the family maid down the stairs in an attempt to stop her going to London and catching the flu. Some of her family find it an affectionate oddity that she lives half in another world, has these odd senses about things, others find it distinctly peculiar and something to be limited. 

The narrative structure can be slightly disorienting to begin with but as you settle into it and the passages between rebirth and death become longer it is quite engrossing. You wonder how she will manage to avoid terrible events, and thankfully some are only present in one version. For a book with so many deaths it is somewhat surprising to discover it is the circumstances of her life that so often tug at the heartstrings. She finds herself the victim of sexual assault, domestic violence, and struggling through the war on meagre rations. Family friends are murdered, siblings killed, and the Blitz is described in the most horrifying and heartbreaking way. Ursula is resilient however, supporting the war effort, going to extremes to help those in need, standing up for herself in difficult circumstances. There is a sense by the end that she is more distinctly aware of what is happening to her, and she considers what she could do to save the global suffering that she is witness to. 

Atkinson cleverly constructs a story that inevitably contains repetition, keeping the reader interested and changing just enough to keep it from becoming boring. The little details she includes to signal that the scene being described is happening simultaneously to one we’ve seen before where she had a very different end are thoughtful. There is one particularly harrowing image from a bombed home during the Blitz that will particularly stay with me. Some of Ursula’s lives are vastly different to others, finding her in other countries, surrounded by an entirely different group of friends or colleagues, but always her family are present, even if only in letter form. 

The dynamics within the Todd family are central to the story. Ursula grows up in a prosperous family with a well-meaning father and a mother acutely aware of appearances. Her sister Pamela is a solid presence in her life, reliable and caring. It is widely accepted that her brother Teddy is everyone’s favourite and there seems to be no jealousy about the matter. Sylvie, her mother, admits that she does not like all of her children. Their Aunt Izzie is a source of frustration and at times embarrassment for Sylvie and Hugh, but she is ultimately there for Ursula in her moments of need, and does not let appearances get in the way of caring for her niece. Sylvie is not as generous. Atkinson also examines the nature of childhood friendships, those that remain throughout the years and those that drift apart with no ill feeling on either side. Relationships and Ursula’s sense of responsibility for those around her are ever present. 

I’m not generally the biggest fan of books set during the World Wars, and hadn’t clocked that this would be before picking it up, but it proved itself to be an addictive read. Atkinson deals with difficult topics with sensitivity and believability. Ursula’s early experiences have an impact on her later life and relationships and she is an interesting protagonist to follow throughout her many lives. There is a lot of familial affection to be found within the pages of this book, as well as a fair deal of suffering. Ultimately, it makes you wonder, what does ‘getting it right’ really mean in life. A wonderful, emotive read with characters that come alive on the page. You’ll find yourself wishing you could see what happens to the other characters after Ursula’s life fades out at times, a testament to the interest they hold.

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Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez

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Criado Perez’s now infamous book on the gender data gap gives us a far-reaching examination of the ways in which women have been excluded from data which would allow changes to make tangible improvements to their lives. In the preface she explains the idea of the default male, that when people say human, they really mean man. Visualising the default human as a white man has very real impacts on those who don’t meet this ‘norm’ (a bizarre mindset when half the population do not fit into this standard on gender lines alone). Tests are so often only carried out on men, meaning that women are seen as outliers, that their bodies are niche or unusual, rather than considering that using men as the basis for design might result in products that are unsuitable for women. She writes about the ways in which we are taught gender expectations and the impact this has on girls’ beliefs in their own possibilities. A solution to this, of course, is to get more women represented in different professions and positions of power, normalising their presence, and bringing in these different perspectives which can lead to less bias.

The book is split into six sections, covering all aspects of life - daily life, the workplace, design, going to the doctor, public life, and when it goes wrong. These cover a broad scope, including scenarios such as snow clearance, female safety in public places, toilets, medicine, and gender bias being built into algorithms that could decide whether or not you are considered for a job. As a woman it can feel disheartening to learn quite how far-reaching inequalities stretch, but perhaps none more so than the fact that health outcomes are so often worse for women because the men in their lives are so indoctrinated with the thought that the role of carer is not for them that they don’t look after those recuperating. These ingrained gender roles are at the core of a lot of the topics discussed in the book. It’s why childcare provision has the biggest impact on women, why the way child benefits are paid can impact how they’re spent, and how transport infrastructure is often not designed for women, who are more likely to be making lots of shorter journeys in the carrying out of caring responsibilities.

The other main issue that comes up time and again is the lack of sex-disaggregated data in research, so even when women are included in studies there’s no way of knowing how their results differ from those of male participants. Most alarmingly, this can mean that drugs are not being developed that would be beneficial to women just because they weren’t effective for men.

Criado Perez uses examples of research and case studies from around the world, and acknowledges that there are other factors that impact inequality. Overall, the picture is of a world that does not value the contributions of women, and doesn’t do the work needed to find out how policy decisions and product designs impact the lives of 50% of the population. Each chapter ends with a call to action, something which is clearly much needed.

I had put off reading this book because it seemed like a topic that would be enraging, and although of course it is not a neutral read and it did variously make me sad, despairing, or angry, it was also just a solid read. She backs up her claims with carefully carried out research, and the extensive end notes point you to the many studies she refers to. There are a lot of facts and figures but she constructs a narrative around them which is interesting to read. At times it can feel slightly repetitive, but that is a problem with the world’s attitude to women, not the book highlighting it. A slow read, but an important one.

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