I loved this book. At first, I was taken aback by all the space; there is an aphoristic feel to the style, to the layout and there are many quotations from Susan Sontag and Virginia Woolf in particular. Was I reading a compilation of other people’s thoughts? Sometimes the simple clarity of the prose knocked me off guard. What was I reading? What would this book give me?
Then, as I read on, I found myself delighting in the space, embracing all that room for contemplation that the book gave to these simple, difficult words about female desire. I say difficult because, as the book explores, discussing female desire is fraught with conditioned expectations, dichotomies of interpretation, a fear of how it will be interpreted and a culture that prefers women to stay silent about their desire. A woman full of desire, a woman hungry for sexual experience or to be in charge of her sexual experience, a woman who refuses to be good, to be compliant, is threatening. It is far easier to stay silent.
This hunger, this desire to consume and explore, to gorge on pleasure, to take centre stage, is at the heart of a feminism that is all about owning every part of a woman, even the desires that play with misogyny, that sit at the painful edge of a cultural shift away from patriarchy that we are still very much in the middle of.
Unmastered is a totally engrossing read. I know I will go back and back to it. I’ve turned down so many pages the book now has that fan quality, its edges ready to be unfurled, ready to fuel my own thoughts.
Go Katherine Angel! Thanks to Heidi James for suggesting this. What a great read. I’ll be reading and reviewing Sealed by Naomi Booth next.