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Granta 115: The F Word (2011)

by Granta: The Magazine of New Writing(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1905881347 (ISBN13: 9781905881345)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Granta Books

series

Granta

review 1: Granta can be a bit of a mixed bag, and sometimes it's rather like those slightly disappointing lucky dip bags where you ended up with a plastic whistle and a gobstopper, but this is one of the best. Maybe it's the subject matter: we may live in a post-feminist age, but there are still questions around the choices open to people according to their gender. I'd be hard-pressed to pick a favourite, especially with such amazing writers as A.S.Byatt, clear-eyed and ironic, or Louise Erdrich, mysteriously mythical, or Eudora Welty, with a playful and preposterous letter of application, but in fact I think the most moving pieces were the non-fiction: a harrowing report on 230 Frenchwomen who were deported to Birkenau in 1943 for 'anti-German activities' and the depressing story o... moref a hijra in Delhi.
review 2: I don't like memoir. I don't like whiney memoirs. I don't like feminist whiney memoirs. This issue is simply too filled with memoir and my other least favorite genre poetry. Did I mention that I hate poetry? Ugh! Took all I had to finish this issue. I am thankful that occasionally the memoirs and poetry were interrupted by actual stories like The Children by Julie Otsuka, The Dreadful Mucamas by Lydia Davis, The Sex Lives of African Girls by Taiye Selasi (excellent) and All I Know About Gertrude Stein by Jeanette Winterson (another excellent story). Also appreciated the historical narrative A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead with its account of the concentration camp experiences of certain French women who served in the Resistance. The placement of these pieces throughout the issue saved it for me. less

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