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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...

October 12, 1976, Soho, London Andy stood in the alley outside the Prince of Wales He felt in the pocket of his leather jacket and found most of a sheet of orange sunshine Andy couldn’t remember putting it there He couldn’t remember how he got to the cinema from the squat in Stoke Newington But he knew that it was morning, that he was in a crowd of people, some heavy, heavy people, some lightweights, old freaks, young punks, odd straights, and that Fantasia was about to start inside Andy balled the blotter in his hand and quickly stuffed it in his mouth He gagged but kept chewing until it was gone He turned and gestured to a wrinkly geezer wearing a tartan scarf but no shirt who was seated on a blackened sheet of cardboard in front of the fire exit The man held up a can of bitter Andy bolted a swig and handed it back ‘Ta very much’, said one, ‘Nae bother’, said the other A short time later Andy was sat in the dark amid zoo noises, crying and slurping, and that is when the lights began   April 13, 1972, Blackpool Andy opened the front door and dropped two plastic bags at the foot of the stairs: one with his schoolwork, the other with his PE kit in He went into the kitchen, turned off the radio, took a bowl from the draining board, opened a cupboard door and took out a packet of Weetabix Andy put two biscuits into the bowl, hesitated, and took one out, placing it back in the packet He opened the fridge, which was empty except for a withered scallion and a dried piece of cheese Andy returned the remaining Weetabix biscuit to the packet, folded it neatly down and put it back in the cupboard He washed the bowl and placed it on the draining board Andy went into the living room, sat down and stared into the empty fireplace   January 5, 1990, Liverpool Andy kneeled on the wooden floor, naked and sobbing, snot roping out of his nose and down

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

June 2011

Arthur Miller

Michael Amherst

fiction

June 2011

The last time I saw Vin and Jackie we were killing slugs. The three of us had been smoking...

Interview

March 2017

Interview with Lidija Dimkovska

Sara Nović

Interview

March 2017

I met Lidija Dimkovska at the Twin Cities Book Festival in October, fleetingly, and completely by accident. I had...

fiction

November 2013

Special School

Iphgenia Baal

fiction

November 2013

 

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