She I Dare Not Name
A compelling memoir about the single life and the courage to live alone in a world made for couples and families.
Astonishing. Luminous. A book about being human.
She I Dare Not Name is a collection of fiercely intelligent, deeply intimate, lyrical reflections on the life of a woman who stands on the threshold between two millennia. Both manifesto and confession, this moving memoir explores the meaning and purpose the author discovered in a life lived entirely without a partner and children.
Funny, sharp, wise and wry, She I Dare Not Name shows how reading saved this spinster's life, and how friends and writing and walking brought a contentment and sense of achievement she never thought possible.
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This is a ravishing book, hard to put down yet necessary to do so every few pages in order to think about Ward’s words. …Even people engrossed in family will find it a beautiful interpretation of an intriguing yet rarely studied social category.’
Read Book Extracts Here: Sunday Life, ArtsHub, Allen & Unwin first chapter.
Ward’s book is an unflinching, mesmeric reflection on modern spinsterhood, a subject on which, at 67, the author speaks with authority.
A sheer delight… Donna Ward is one of those rare creatures—a writer who can actually write.
Reading She I Dare Not Name is like encountering a place of total stillness in a world of incessant, incoherent clamour. …it is a remarkable, profound, even necessary book.
With a devastatingly clear-eyed honesty, the word Ward dares to name is ‘spinster’, and this meditative collection of essays spin their own spell, making a deep dive into the world of female solitude in all its guises. She lays it out like a calm tarot reading: feminism, courage, silence, loneliness, grief, recovery and the power of the generative idea, as well as all the labels that come with carving out your own path of self-definition and self-determination.