Natasha Walter

Wife.Mother.Spy.A double life is no life at all.Since the disappearance of her husband in 1951, Laura Leverett has been living in limbo with her daughter in Geneva. All others see is her conventional, charming exterior; nobody guesses the secret she is carrying.Her double life began years ago, when she stepped on to the boat which carried her across the Atlantic in 1939. Eager to learn, and eager to love, she found herself suddenly inspired by a young Communist woman she met on the boat. In London she begins to move between two different worlds from the urbane society of her cousins and their upper class friends, to the anger of those who want to forge a new society. One night at a party she meets a man who seems to her to combine both worlds, but who is hiding a secret bigger than she could ever imagine.Impelled by desire, she finds herself caught up in his hidden life. Love grows, but so do fear and danger. This is the warm-blooded story of the Cold War. The story of a wife whose part will take her from London in the Blitz, to Washington at the height of McCarthyism, to the possible haven of the English countryside. Gradually she learns what is at stake for herself, her husband, and her daughter; gradually she realises the dark consequences of her youthful idealism.Sweeping and exhilarating, alive with passion and betrayal, A Quiet Life is the first novel from a brilliant new voice in British fiction.

Wife. Mother. Spy. Eighteen-year-old Laura Leverett arrives from America for a new life in England. At the side-lines of her cousin's glamorous gatherings, Laura hungers for someone with whom she can discuss the new political ideas sweeping through London. Edward Last is the kindred spirit Laura has been waiting for. But the secret he is carrying will test Laura's ideals to their limits and take them across oceans before tearing them apart...

Un libro muy polémico y de actualidad, una tesis feminista para el siglo XXI • Denuncia los excesos de la telebasura, la obsesión con el culto al cuerpo, la "sexualización" de la infancia, dentro de lo que la autora llama "el nuevo sexismo", del que son tan responsables las mujeres como los hombres. • Escrito con sentido común, de forma ágil, basado en muchas entrevistas personales de la autora, muy pegado a la actualidad social (no un ensayo feminista "universitario" y doctrinario)

Doscientos años después de la aparición de los primeros movimientos feministas, asistimos a una mutación sorprendente. Dos discursos aparentemente irrefutables, el de la libre elección y el de la biologia, han derivado respectivamente en un nuevo sexismo y un nuevo determinismo que contribuyen a fijar los estereotipos sobre el comportamiento femenino y masculino. Por un lado, "la imagen de la perfeccion femenina a la que las mujeres deberian aspirar esta (cada vez mas) definida por el atractivo sexual", un atractivo cuya formulacion determina, trasladandola a toda la sociedad, la propia industria del sexo. Esta situacion se justifica sistematicamente con el argumento de que se trata de "elecciones" que realizan las propias mujeres. Por otro lado, "la conviccion de que "la quimica y la estructura del cerebro" y "la inclinacion genetica" explican el comportamiento femenino estereotipado sirve no solo para explicar como aprenden y juegan las niñas pequeñas, sino tambien para justificar las desigualdades que encontramos en la vida adulta".Pero esas "elecciones" podrian no ser tan libres, y los "descubrimientos cientificos" podrian no ser tan concluyentes. Walter cuestiona la validez de ambos discursos basandose, en gran parte, en la cronica de su impacto en la sociedad britanica.