Last night (over char-grilled leeks alongside something delicious and foamy, at the superb Estelle) my friend Leanne said that I needed a better system for categorizing book reviews on my blog. What she actually meant was that I needed a category called Books Leanne Would Like.

So, what sort of books does Leanne like? She said she mostly reads “…from the female gaze…” (please accept that we’d drunk many glasses of fizz by this point and were well into six-courses with matched wine). But she was prepared to read from the male gaze.

I asked her what was the last book she loved. She couldn’t answer that (but mentioned Eucalyptus which, although great, I won’t count because I know that she read it decades ago). She told me what she hated – The Slap – and we had a robust conversation about the characters and the sex in the book. Leanne’s preparedness for the male gaze lost some footing during our Slap discussion. Continue reading →