My Body by Emily Ratajkowski

Anyone who read Emily Ratajkowski’s viral essay Buying Myself Back from 2020 will know she’s a force to be reckoned with – she found fame for her looks, but she’s also a talented writer. My Body is a series of essays picking up on many of the themes in her original piece – ownership, assault, sexism and the role of a model. Through the essays, Ratajkowski tracks her life as the daughter of a professor and art teacher, becoming a model as a teen, trying to make money in an often dangerous industry, to becoming a mother today.

While many stories are heartbreaking and highlight abuse experienced in the fashion industry, some are less empathetic.

It’s hard not to shiver when reading Rose Tremain’s latest offering, set in bleak Victorian London. Lily’s life seems destined for misery: she’s abandoned to the Foundling Hospital as a baby and after a brief happy spell at a country farm, spends most of her childhood at the wicked hands of the nurses, later to lead a lonely existence as a wig maker. The main point of tension is Lily is a criminal, but the narrative works strangely, meaning we find out the victim of her crime about halfway through the book without much suspense, and she spends the rest of the time agonising over her actions. Unfortunately, this takes away much of the drama, making for a slightly dull read.