5. If you had to sum up your life in a handful of photographs, which ones would you choose? Is there a moment in your life that you wish had been caught on camera?
6. Vee’s views and ideals undergo a dramatic shift in her late teenage years. Can you think of a pinnacle moment in your life which changed your views or beliefs?
7. To what extent does Vee choose her isolation? Which comes first – a solitary nature, or the desire to be a photographer?
8. Could you sympathise with Vee’s final photos of Leonie? Were those photos brave, intrusive, accidental or a coping device?
9. Do you think you’d have been friends with Vee or Leonie if you met them in your teens or twenties?
10. Who was your favourite male character in the book and why?
11. Do you think it matters who Erica’s mother is?
12. On page 359, the author includes an extensive bibliography covering lots of novels and landmark books on feminism and gender – has The Woman in the Photograph inspired you to try any of these? What other books would you recommend for readers who enjoyed this, whether stories of female friendship, novels about Britain in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, or books that explore issues of feminism?
Select bibliography
John Berger: Understanding a Photograph
John Berger: Ways of Seeing
Susan Sontag: On Photography
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: We Should All Be Feminists
Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Holmes and Susie Orbach (eds): Fifty Shades of Feminism
Jessa Crispin: Why I Am Not A Feminist
Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex
Susan Faludi: Backlash
Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique
Roxane Gay: Bad Feminist
bell hooks: feminism is for everybody
Audre Lord: Sister Outsider
Kate Millett: Sexual Politics
Susan Mitchell: Icons, Saints and Divas
Robin Morgan (ed): Sisterhood is Powerful
Susie Orbach: Fat is a Feminist Issue
Laurie Penny: Bitch Doctrine
Camille Paglia: Free Women, Free Men
Ann Pettitt: Walking to Greenham
Marsha Rowe (ed): Spare Rib Reader
Rebecca Solnit: Men Explain Things to Me
Victoria Pepe, Rachel Holmes, Amy Annette, Martha Mosse and Alice Stride (eds): I Call Myself A Feminist
Jessica Valenti: Sex Object
Naomi Wolf: The Beauty Myth
Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own
Angela Carter: The Bloody Chamber
Marilyn French: The Women’s Room
Erica Jong: Fear of Flying
Alice Walker: The Color Purple
Fay Weldon: Praxis
About the author
Stephanie Butland lives near the sea in the north-east of England. She writes in a studio at the bottom of her garden. Researching her novels has turned her into an occasional performance poet and tango dancer.
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Also by Stephanie Butland
Novels
Letters to My Husband
The Other Half of My Heart
Lost for Words
The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae
Non-fiction
How I Said Bah! to cancer
Thrive: The Bah! Guide to Wellness After cancer
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Zaffre
This ebook edition published in 2019 by
80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE
Copyright © Stephanie Butland, 2019
Cover design by Alexandra Allden.
Cover photograph © Elle Moss / Arcangel Images.
The moral right of Stephanie Butland to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-785-76894-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-785-76896-5
This ebook was produced by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd
Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk