#BlogTour ‘Young Women’ by Jessica Moor

About the book…

Everyone’s got that history, I guess.

Everyone’s got a story.

When Emily meets the enigmatic and dazzling actress Tamsin, her life changes. Drawn into Tamsin’s world of Soho living, boozy dinners, and cocktails at impossibly expensive bars, Emily’s life shifts from black and white to technicolour and the two women become inseparable. Tamsin is the friend Emily has always longed for; beautiful, fun, intelligent and mysterious and soon Emily is neglecting her previous life – her work assisting vulnerable women, her old friend Lucy – to bask in her glow.

But when a bombshell news article about a decades-old sexual assault case breaks, Emily realises that Tamsin has been hiding a secret about her own past. Something that threatens to unravel everything . . . Young Women is a razor sharp novel that slices to the heart of our most important relationships, and asks how complicit we all are in this world built for men

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the blog tour invite and gifted e-arc of ‘Young Women’ by Jessica Moor which is out in hardcover now from Bonnier Books.

This is one of those extraordinary and incendiary novels which is a reflective surface for the times we live in.

It is so difficult to shake off the book hangover, as the protagonist, Emily says, ‘Everyone has a story…’ and it is so true. As you read, as a woman, all the acts which you have experienced through your life mingle with what Emily and Tamsin have been through, seen through the prism of modern day media witch-hunts.

Emily is a lawyer who has fallen into advocacy work after leaving her last position under a cloud. She works for a company which supports women who have been subject to abuse of power, usually perpetuated by white men with power (money, social class standing and influence).

She meets Tamsin at a protest against climate change, their random clasping of hands in unity against the force of the police is symbolic of not only the fragile nature of female friendship, trauma bonded yet unaware that they are.

Tamsin is a jobbing actress, living in a flat in London, a bohemian lifestyle so far removed from Emily’s day to day of meal deals, random hook-ups on dating apps and a sense that she should be something more.

She has been 6 years out of full time education and her closest friend from that time, Lucy, is settling down as a responsible adult with a partner and a flat and plans to try for a baby.

Tamsin eats when she wants, cheese and wine on baguettes in parks after dark, never looking at the card reader before paying for expensive, luxury items and swimming in a women’s only pond, finding companionship and camaraderie in women who are old enough and confident enough to stand their ground against men.

But each of three women-Lucy is involved very deeply in this despite being ‘off screen’ quite a bit-has been a victim of circumstances occurring because they are women.

There is Emily, ousted from her previous position due to the machinations of her boyfriend, Harry, who has also done something to her which she refers to obliquely, but we never quite know what he has done. And in a reflection, Emily is wiling away work hours looking at the latest huge sex scandal and looking for blood, injury, bruises as proof positive of harm done whilst not revealing the specifics of what happened to her.

Lucy had an affair with a married teacher at their school when she was 16 years old, an uncomfortable truth which sits, not talked about, in the subtext of every conversation Emily and she have.

Tamsin is the one with the most to hide and the most to lose, as rumours swirl around a Hollywood director abusing his position, sexually harassing, assaulting and buying off young actresses. Her involvement in this case could prove to be a breaking point as the bone of contention is ‘where is the proof?’

Burt as can be seen by the latest high profile Hollywood cases, specifically Amber Heard where her proof was ridiculed, negated and dismissed as she did not portray herself as the archetypal victim, proof does not always equate with justice.

There is so much to pull apart in this novel, it packs a weight punch to the conscience as you recognise experiences and attitudes which are present in everyday life-the casual grabbing of body parts on the Tube, the casual entitlement of Tinder hook-ups who want you to leave when the job is done, the ‘keep quiet, no one will listen to you’ rhetoric of those with power against those without. And then the social media clamouring for blood which leaves you endlessly queasy as the world weighs in on your most vulnerable moments.

Is it an uncomfortable book? Yes, yes it is, it’s also a necessary one as it takes the lives of these three women and exposes them as raw, open and bleeding in the face of public betrayal, dismissal and disregard. The value which we place on these women is not relative to their worth and that to me is the ultimate tragedy.

About the author…

Jessica Moor studied English at Cambridge before completing a Creative Writing MA at Manchester University. Prior to this she spent a year working in the violence against women and girls sector and this experience inspired her first novel, ‘Keeper’.

Links-https://www.jessicamoor.com/

Twitter @jessicamoor @RandomTTours @bonnierbooks_uk