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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.

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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...

Once upon a time there was – no, better: you are a thief who wanders through the cities and deserts of a mythical Persia robbing carpets and small treasures Like an actor who has just arrived in the world of soap operas, you are good-looking, young and athletic; there is always a few days’ stubble on your suntanned face, making you look like an occasional surfer Your allies are a sharp scimitar and a donkey You are the protagonist of the game Prince of Persia[1] and your situation, at the moment, is as follows: you were surprised by a sandstorm and lost sight of the beast, Farah, who was carrying your latest spoils on his back Unable to see a thing, you advance with difficulty into the abrasive wind from the storm, fall into a canyon and the only reason you don’t break your back is thanks to the extraordinary athletic skills already mentioned The camera cuts to a shot of the angelic little toes of a girl trying to escape from armed soldiers running across the harsh sands of the desert Her flight leads her to jump into the canyon, and she falls on top of you She’s beautiful, lean, her hair cut with a knife, and she has a hippy-chic look composed of a small white blouse, light and finely worked, and corsair’s shoes made from dark grey twill Her beautiful face is reminiscent of Natalie Portman’s, with finer and more angular features Her body is spread out on top of yours You say, ‘Hey’ She covers your mouth with her hand until she can be sure the soldiers have lost the trail, looks briefly into your eyes, and runs away   Up until now, you – the player, not the thief – were merely observing the scene, as in a film, but at this instant, the control passes into your hands The instructions which appear on screen show how to direct the character of the thief in pursuit of the girl using the joystick commands, from a third-person perspective which is one step back from the

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

October 2013

Last Supper in Seduction City

Álvaro Enrigue

TR. Brendan Riley

fiction

October 2013

 ‘. . . and the siege dissolved to peace, and the horsemen all rode down in sight of the...

poetry

August 2016

Three New Poems

Sarah V. Schweig

poetry

August 2016

‘The Audit’ and ‘Red Bank’ are excerpts from Schweig’s forthcoming book, Take Nothing With You (University of Iowa Press, 2016).  ...

feature

September 2014

Paris at Night

Matthew Beaumont

feature

September 2014

The picturesque lightshow that, once the sun has set, takes place on the hour, every hour, when the Eiffel...

 

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