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Helen Charman
Helen Charman is a writer and academic based in Glasgow. Her first book, Mother State – a political history of motherhood — is forthcoming from Allen Lane in 2024. She teaches in the English Studies department at Durham University.

Articles Available Online


Attachment Barbies: On Watching Grey’s Anatomy

Essay

March 2023

Helen Charman

Essay

March 2023

In August 2022, ABC announced that Ellen Pompeo, currently the highest-paid actress on American network television, was leaving Grey’s Anatomy, the show on which...

Book Review

May 2021

HOLDING THE ROOM: ON HOLLY PESTER’S ‘COMIC TIMING’

Helen Charman

Book Review

May 2021

The last poem in Holly Pester’s first collection COMIC TIMING (Granta, 2021) is called ‘Villette’; it shares its title...

The last fella was baby-faced with tufty brown hair and it was Majella’s turn to sit in front He’d been crapping on about what Dublin girls liked to get up to, and when she didn’t answer, he told her to cheer up outta that and let a smile out of her He took his hand off the gear stick and, before it landed on her knee, she stabbed him in the cheek with the brassy end of her lighter, yelling at him to stop the car From the back seat, Roisin bashed him on the head with her fist and the car skidded sideways onto the grass verge While they scrabbled to get out, he kept shouting, ‘What the fuck?’ Majella slammed the door and, as he screeched away, Roisin whacked her haversack off the boot They stood in the middle of the road yelling ‘wanker’ till he was out of sight    ‘That’ll learn you,’ Roisin shouted ‘Fucken prick’ Then they were both laughing, and yelling, ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?’ in his country-boy accent and mimicking his wide frightened eyes    When they’d calmed down, Roisin lit two fags and handed one to Majella They were on a strip of road with no houses, just rough, tussocky grass and hawthorn Majella sniffed the air From somewhere behind them, the smell of the sea drifted across the fields, mingled with the slight coolness of evening    ‘Fuck’s sake,’ she said ‘Middle of nowhere’   ‘It’ll be grand,’ Roisin said They stood smoking and looking around Roisin took a last drag, dropped her butt onto the road and screwed it into the tarmac with a pointed foot She picked up her haversack, her hair swinging, sleek and shiny, around her face, then walked backwards along the grass verge getting ready to stick her thumb out    ‘My turn to sit up front,’ she said ‘For me sins’   Eventually an auld lad in a filthy Ford pulled up and dropped them outside Jack Whites   Dekko was waiting for them in the car park He strolled over, looped his arms around Roisin’s neck and gave her a long,

Contributor

November 2017

Helen Charman

Contributor

November 2017

Helen Charman is a writer and academic based in Glasgow. Her first book, Mother State – a political history...

Essay

May 2020

Where do I put myself, if public life’s destroyed? On reading Denise Riley

Helen Charman

Essay

May 2020

How do you read someone who doesn’t always want to be read? This is a question I used to...

Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’

Book Review

October 2018

Helen Charman

Book Review

October 2018

Reading Sally Rooney’s second novel Normal People is a compulsive experience. After the navy blue Faber & Faber proofs were sent out in early...
Rendering intimacy impossible, deploy lifeboats (mark yourself safe) Not listening as such, more waiting to speak, above all mark yourself, it’s so important to be safe Carry on, they demand, we’re not reeling / we are reeling Is this the place for a fountain reference? Probably ‘What first attracted you to your wife, sir?’ ‘Her delicacy / her ankles / her hatred of the Tories’                  Alive twice over but that’s a whole life gone too                you know I’m sorry, he holds his hands up, I’m                sorry, he backs away: my conscience couldn’t                keep company with your body I say, your body?                it just made me think: it’s only a nine month stay   The next time you lay a hand on me, I’ll make a perfect gleaming dive into the Thames Aren’t you glad / to be here? I am
Electioneering

Prize Entry

November 2017

Helen Charman


READ NEXT

fiction

March 2014

The Nothing on Which the Fire Depends

Micheline Aharonian Marcom

fiction

March 2014

Friday 9 November 2009   The coffee is lukewarm, but she doesn’t mind to drink it this way. She...

fiction

February 2012

A Gift from Bill Gates

Wu Ang

TR. Nicky Harman

fiction

February 2012

My name is Mr Thousands and I’ve worked in all sorts of jobs. Most recently, I’ve been spending my...

feature

June 2015

Uneasy Lies the Head

William Watkin

feature

June 2015

Last October I was standing in my kitchen, waiting for espresso to trickle from the spout of our imposing...

 

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