Ditching shame: The Gisèle Pelicot effect
Sexual shame looms large in my novel, X in Provence, set by sheer if harrowing happenstance in Mazan, a village now sadly synonymous with rape. Rai, an ambitious journalist, moves […]
Sexual shame looms large in my novel, X in Provence, set by sheer if harrowing happenstance in Mazan, a village now sadly synonymous with rape. Rai, an ambitious journalist, moves […]
I write this in emotional turmoil. I am struggling, like women the world over, to comprehend the mass rape of Gisèle Pelicot, drugged into unconsciousness by her husband and sexually […]
There’s an etiquette to eating in France, which includes when you shouldn’t eat. “Mum, the family I’m staying with doesn’t snack,” my adolescent daughter told me, aghast. “I mean, […]
You’ve met the golden one, the mate you reckon could be forever. And how wonderful, he’s into commitment, eager to build a loving life together. But then you hit a […]
Rai, the English adventurer in X in Provence, finds herself facing a new set of cultural phenomena when she moves countries, or rather continents, to be with her lover. Back in Europe from a long stint in Hong Kong, the extent of the culture shock she experiences comes….well, as rather a shock.
Provence had been simmering in my mind as the setting for a book ever since my travels there, a sandwich stop between career changes. Over time that simmering turned into a certitude.