Emma Barnett

About bloody time that I finished this one. 2,5 stars I think, but since I learnt some things from the book I will round up.

The book was a bit too memoir-y for my personal taste. Also, the author lets us believe that she thinks that a period is there for baby making and for becoming and being a woman. I read the revised and updated version, but in the end it turned out that she meant that she just added a few chapters to stay relevant in the current discourse. If she really revised the book, she could have gone without things like 'woman is equal to menstruating' (and vice versa statements). Furthermore, the book speaks about period sex, but according to this book, sex is nothing more than peen in vageen (oh no, excuse me: ‘man has sex with woman’, as the author puts it).

However, I did like the more factual side of the book. Could have been an essay, but whatever. I think the book has been published too little too late. Fifteen years ago I would have thought of it as a banger. Now I think about it, the book was just not as groundbreaking as I expected it to be, and maybe that is the biggest reason why I sound a bit let down and snarky (also, I am on my period).

The book is quintessentially British, so even if the period stories were not totally up my ally, at least it helped to improve my English.

edit: it has been brought to my attention by someone that I could end this review with a bold statement and then adding the word period. Nevertheless, British English (aka normal English) calls the punctuation mark at the end of a sentence a full stop, so the pun wouldn’t work.

But oh well, a full stop of my period would also mean the end of a sentence for me.… (més)