Funny, cutting, and a savage indictment of the cheap consolations of meme-ified faux feminism, misplaced solidarity, and sacrifices for the supposed greater good.
Fantasies, or are they premonitions, of a great wave, an impending apocalypse, threaten to swamp a young woman in a slowly curdling relationship in Barcelona. From the outside it all looks good—“we have friends who design jewellery, who make politically committed electronic art, who are concerned about their mobile devices being monitored, who talk about climate change”—but her discontent means she’s not living up to her part of the bargain.
Four hundred years earlier, Deborah Moody marries, loses a child, loses her husband, loses everything, and flees England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But if relying on a husband proved a mistake, independence doesn’t mean freedom from the dangerous vanities of men.