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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...

It is a two lane road somewhere in North America The car is pulled onto the shoulder with the brake lights on A grey midrange sedan from twenty years ago The road is edged on both sides by thin half bare trees It is winter, autumn, or spring The day is blank, covered in high cloud Now and then another vehicle goes by A police officer walks forward, gun drawn, towards the driverside door of the midrange sedan He is state police and wears the felt hat and the uniform with the thick dark stripe on the outside trouser leg, the hat pinched at the top with the wide flat brim The shirt is tucked and tight round his paunch He is heavyset, thick-bodied He takes small steps, in a strong shooting stance There is someone inside the midrange sedan Through the back window there is a head, unclear, in silhouette They have not deserted the vehicle or fled the scene At least one person sat in the front Black dot birds scatter from the tops of the trees, and now and then another vehicle goes by The trooper is pointing with his right hand the gun through the window at the driver, and with his left hand he his reaching for the handle, going for the arrest He is shouting, has been shouting the whole time He pulls open the door and shouts at the driver He is pointing the gun and shouting at the driver He tells them get out of the car now He says get out of the fucking car He holsters the gun and pulls the driver from the sedan to the road The driver is female, Caucasian, middle-aged, and overweight She is facedown on the asphalt in her black slacks and baggy jumper, with the trooper on top of her, his knee on her back He hits her on the back of the head and unclips the handcuffs from his belt He is shouting, has been shouting the whole time He says get on the floor, get on the floor, I’ll cut your

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

May 2017

Gloria

Aaron Peck

fiction

May 2017

Bernard, whenever he thought of Geoffrey, would remember his gait on the afternoon of their first meeting. Geoffrey walked...

feature

May 2015

In the Light of Ras Tafari

Anna Della Subin

feature

May 2015

‘A STRANGE NEW FISH EMITS A BLINDING GREEN LIGHT’, the article in National Geographic announced. Off the coast of...

fiction

Issue No. 8

The Lady of the House

Claire-Louise Bennett

fiction

Issue No. 8

Wow it’s so still. Isn’t it eerie. Oh yes. So calm. Everything’s still. That’s right. Look at the rowers...

 

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