Young Women

Author: Jessica Moor

Publisher: Manilla Press

Available: 26th May 2022 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours & Manilla Press for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details

A vivid, bold, and compelling new novel of female friendship and what it means to be a young woman after MeToo, from one of the most arresting, exciting young novelists writing today

‘Everyone’s got that history, I guess. Everyone’s got a story.’

When Emily meets the enigmatic and dazzling actress Tamsin, her life changes. Drawn into Tamsin’s world of Soho living, boozy dinners, and cocktails at impossibly expensive bars, Emily’s life shifts from black and white to technicolour and the two women become inseparable.

Tamsin is the friend Emily has always longed for; beautiful, fun, intelligent and mysterious and soon Emily is neglecting her previous life – her work assisting vulnerable women, her old friend Lucy – to bask in her glow. But when a bombshell news article about a decades-old sexual assault case breaks, Emily realises that Tamsin has been hiding a secret about her own past. Something that threatens to unravel everything . . .

Young Women is a razor-sharp novel that slices to the heart of our most important relationships and asks how complicit we all are in this world built for men.

My Thoughts

As I sat down to write my thoughts on Jessica Moor’s latest book Young Women, my brain was like a ping pong ball bouncing frenetically around in my head; where to start, what to say… and I was deeply concerned that I don’t possess an iota of the writing skills necessary to adequately elucidate the power, prowess, and pertinence of the themes in this novel or the clever, complex and conscious ethos and style of Jessica’s writing. Young Women for me reverberates with richness, rage and reticence, it is the book, that if I ever won millions on the Euro lottery, I would buy hundreds of copies and deliver them to schools, libraries and reading groups country wide, it is a book that needs to be shared and avidly discussed, it should be on English literature modules and I hope that a literary prize panel will give it the public accolades it truly deserves! Bravo Jessica, bravo!

What I have come to love and admire about Jessica’s books; both this novel and her stratospherically successful debut novel Keeper; is her ability to weave complex societal issues facing women into her narrative, with visceral vitality and she never shies away from awkward, awful dichotomies women face, she hits them with a feline fierceness and allows her readers to come to their own conclusions regarding the themes she explores! At the heart of this book is friendship, connection and the intricacies and ramifications of consent, revealed from the perspectives and relationship of three women. Young women, who could be any of us, past, present, or future; such is the nature of their experiences! Although, when I started this book, I was slightly freaked out (as Emily & Lucy) have a nearly identical geographical background to myself, let just say I know the commute from East Croydon to Blackfriars, Victoria, and London Bridge like the back of my hand!! Sorry, random tangent!

So let me give you a little taste of the novel and our protagonists: Emily (a lawyer), Lucy (a teacher) and Tamsin (an actor); Emily and Lucy share a past as school friends, who retained their relationship through to adulthood; their choices of career and lifestyles have diverged since leaving university and embarking on those first steps of career and searching for a romantic partner, both are determined and dedicated to their choices. Lucy is quiet, sedate, organised and fully focused on her role as a teacher and settling down in her relationship with her partner and I think is amused and slightly exasperated by Emily’s controlled chaos and I think Emily though she’s fond of her friend, doesn’t fully appreciate Lucy’s choices or her reasons for them; they still retain a connection, with a regular catch ups although their perspectives of each other are coloured by assumptions of their shared past and presumed knowledge of each others experiences and their connection is slightly off kilter.

Emily is keen on living life to the full, she’s not ready to settle and I get the impression, she wishes Lucy would act more like her wing man on potentially shared adventures! Emily is a bit of a warrior, her job entails fighting for the rights and justice of marginalised women, she believes she has a handle on adulting, her moral and ethics compass is secured or is it!? On a political march, she meets an American (or rather a Canadian) woman, Tamsin and a new friendship is born and blossoms; they seem to have similar desires in living life, Emily is fascinated by her glamourous new friend and believes she’s starting to live the kind of life she had always imagined, posh cocktails, dancing until dawn, interesting and intellectual conversations and even her rather calamitous love life seems to be improving! Until the proverbial spanner in the works occurs; a breaking news story; of interest to Emily because it involves the sexual coercion of young actresses by an established, famous producer (whose films Emily has always admired but not any more). As for Tamsin, she is elegant, enigmatic and her life experiences have certainly made her the woman she has become but her perspective on what is to follow, will make your mind fizz…I am saying nothing more!

As the world media is awash with this scandal, the actresses the involved, the, he said, she said elements, accusations flying, supercisions in all directions and the particulars of the case, start to impinge and dominate Emily’s life initially from her own moral perspectives but the ramifications overflow into her reactions at work, her attitude towards Lucy and influence her own emotional comprehension. Emily is impacted further when she discovers that Tamsin also has a connection to this story…now before you think, I’m spoiling anything. I promise, I’m not; it would be obvious and easy to assume about how the book will unfurl from this point or what might happen next; let me say to you; nothing from this point is predictable and you may think you can guess what may occur, let me assure you that, you can’t! Jessica is a masterful storyteller and the directions she takes her characters in, is utter genius and will throw up so many questions for you as a reader; chiefly; what I would do in such circumstances and in attempting to answer such questions; you must consider each character’s backstory, development and perspectives and then these considerations present you with such a conundrum of moral, ethical, intellectual intangibility, with potentially numerous outcomes. There is no black or white option available! I consider myself to be forcefully direct in my opinions but I am still digesting and cogitating the questions Jessica poses through her cast’s experiences, reactions, and actions. Days after I finished reading the book, I am still thinking about these elements and I predict, I will be doing so for weeks and months to come…and I have no doubt once you read this book, you will be too…feel free to let me know what you think!

As this exceptional novel, makes its way into the public’s conscious, the term feminist leanings will certainly be attached to it and yes, this book does have those character traits but I know that the term feminism has ability to turn off readers as much as it turns them on and I don’t want it to be a reason you don’t embark on reading this book. Because as a phrase, it is often used to denigrate rather than celebrate, too often banded about in the negative; as if the collective voices of women should be scorned and eschewed and made to be seen as nothing more than a parade of braless harridans, strident and screeching…instead as I see it, Feminism is a word of power and protection and it matters little whether you shave your legs, go braless or choose wear every product ever produced by Clarins all at the same time, that is up to you! Feminism it is a term I believe as women, that we should view and embrace as a path to collegic cooperation, in much the same way as #MeToo hashtag is! Together we are stronger to weather the storms of patriarchal entitlement and navigate the treacherous waters of emotional and sexual coercion and Jessica’s book highlights for me at least the importance of acknowledging feminism in this way as well as providing an arena for discussion and opening our minds to flexible non-judgmental perceptions! Eek, I hope that wasn’t too preachy!

Jessica’s new book is undoubtable a powerhouse of ideas and themes, astute, articulate and alluring. It is a read I am in awe of and admire in equal measure and one that I will be sending to all my friends as birthday gifts at some point this year, pennies allowing. It a read, that will certainly be one of my favourite books of 2022 and hope you are as engaged by Emily, Lucy, and Tamsin; their friendship, feminism, flaws an all; as I have been and continue to be…it is a novel, you will never forget or be able to stop discussing! Get a copy today!

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Jessica Moor studied English at Cambridge before completing a Creative Writing MA at Manchester University. Her debut novel Keeper was published in 2020 to rave reviews and critical acclaim. Jessica Moor was selected as one of the Observer’s debut novelists of 2020, and her debut, Keeper was chosen by the Sunday Times, Independent and Cosmopolitan as one of their top debuts of the year. Keeper was nominated for the Desmond Elliott Prize and an Edgar Award. Young Women is her second novel.

Follow Jessica on Twitter @jessicammoor

Please do read some of the other reviews on this blog tour.