Shirley Manson of Garbage: ‘I was shuffling about on a Zimmer frame. I was absolutely stripped of any pride'
It's a cliche to say you can take the person out of the country but can't take the country out of the person. It certainly seems to be true of
Shirley Manson
, however.
Despite having spent the past three decades on the west coast of the United States, frequent trips back to Edinburgh, where she was born, have ensured that she retains her brogue. She would feel at a loss, she says, if the city were no longer in her life.
'My accent has softened just by default, living in America for so long. If you watch interviews of me when I was young, the accent is so much broader than it is now, and that's not something I feel good about. At the same time, I realise I still sound Scottish, so I'm not going to sweat it too much.'
Manson is talking in the run-up to the release of Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, the eighth album by
Garbage
, the rock band whose instantly recognisable frontwoman she has been since the mid-1990s, when the group's self-titled debut album, from 1995, introduced a sleeker, more experimental and dynamic version of alt rock.
READ MORE
Garbage's blend of the strikingly commanding musician, lyricist and singer with three studious American musicians, in Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig – also an acclaimed producer, best known at the time for his work on the Nirvana album Nevermind – proved hugely successful.
The band racked up international hits with both albums and singles, as well as Grammy nominations and the commission to write the theme song for the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.
Although not the most prolific of acts, Garbage remain a going concern, releasing muscular, melodic music. Vig's production skills give the music its titanium-like sheen; Manson's potent lyrics and voice give it ballast.
The new album didn't arrive without a modicum of trouble, however.
'The minute you finish it and send it, you're riddled with regret,' Manson says. 'Making the record was such a disparate experience that when we first finished it, I said to my husband' – the recording engineer and producer Billy Bush, whom Manson married in 2010 – 'that I hate everything I've done on this record, all my melodies, all my words.
'I had a sort of tantrum about it, and there was a moment when I said to him that I don't want this to come out. Then I calmed down and realised a lot of my feelings about the record were surrounded by the fact that it had been such a physical struggle for me, and it wasn't at all a joyous experience.'
Manson is referring to three years of intense pain that she went through in requiring both hips to be replaced, one at the beginning of the work for the new album, the other at the very end of the recording process.
'In the run-ups to both surgeries I was on a lot of pain medication. I had a lot of brain fog, so I had to focus on my physicality, which is something I've never had to do in my life before. Being physical has come very naturally to me. I've been gifted with a very healthy little body that has propelled me through life into my 50s with never a backwards glance.
'But then all of a sudden I was shuffling, literally, through Beverly Hills to my doctor's surgery in sweatsuits, no makeup, and a Zimmer frame. People talk about moments in their lives when they were stripped of their pride. That time would be the moment in my life when I was absolutely stripped of any pride I might have ever had.'
What she was going through forced her to adopt a new perspective. 'It turned out to be a kind of magical ride in a funny way, even though it was hard,' she says. 'I can't divorce my physical pain from the making of the new record, because they're so intrinsically linked. I had to change the way I chose to think, and I had to change a lot of my practices.
'That required discipline and patience, each of which I have had very little of in my life. Even though it was challenging, it was a positive experience, and ultimately it taught me some very profound lessons, for which I'm very grateful.'
The loss of mobility 'taught me to focus on tiny incremental changes. When you literally cannot walk you have to teach yourself how to walk again. You have to apply patience, discipline and hope'.
Garbage: Butch Vig, Shirley Manson, Duke Erikson and Steve Marker. Photograph: Joseph Cultice
Her confidence had flowed away. 'I got very depressed. I had no control over my body, but I realised that if I didn't kick some positivity into my life with my mind, then I was doomed.'
One of the challenges was to avoid letting her mind run riot.
'My imagination has been a terror my whole life, but now I was starting to learn how to harness it a bit better. That has been a wonderful realisation from the past few years, that I can change my mind, harness my mind. I was never fully aware of that before.
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Shirley Manson: 'I'm still a work in progress and a shambling mess'
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'I'm a cerebral person, in a way. I spend far too much time thinking about stuff, but the past few years have taught me to be
in
my body, it taught me to move my body and it taught me to persevere.'
Manson's post-surgery physiotherapy is now long behind her, she says, and she's back to full fitness. 'I've always been fit, always sort of athletic, always gone to the gym. I mean, the miracle of the body is astounding, and the genius of medical science is amazing, so it's all good and it's all in the past.
'However, it did help me birth a very different approach as we were making the album, while the lyrics have been completely influenced by the physical trauma I was finding myself in and infused the words with an entirely different perspective.'
This is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in Chinese Fire Horse, in which Manson sings about people's perception of age: 'you say my time is over, that I have gotten old, that I no longer do it for you, that my face now leaves you cold. You say I'm looking heavy, and I have lost my mind, that I should do the right thing by everybody, and I should just retire … Yeah, I might be much older, so much older than you, but I've still got the power in my brain, in my body. I'll take no s**t from you.'
Manson has made no secret about how exasperated she gets when the media focus on her age. Is she weary of talking about it?
'I can't say I am, actually. Indeed, I very much like talking about getting older, because I feel there's so little out there that focuses on the positivity of ageing.'
In fact Chinese Fire Horse was inspired by a question about her age that somebody asked on the first day of promoting Garbage's album No Gods No Masters, in 2021. She was 54 then and is 58 now. The absurdity of such questions is that the three men in the band are 74 (Erikson), 66 (Marker) and 69 (Vig).
Garbage at the Torhout-Werchter Festival, Belgium, in July 1998. Photograph:'I can guarantee you not one member of the band has ever been asked such a question,' she says, her voice seething. 'So, yeah, I was offended, and I also realised how ludicrous it was. I'm really tired of our culture telling women that, basically, by the time they're past their 20s they have no agency.
'For the first time in the history of the music industry we're finally seeing women enjoying vigorous careers, with full agency, into their 70s and 80s. By that I mean the likes of Patti Smith, Stevie Nicks, Debbie Harry, Chrissy Hynde, Chaka Khan, Lucinda Williams, Dolly Parton and many more. That is a brand new thing worthy of our attention and our respect.
'I speak about this experience that I endured because I want women, all women – and men, for that matter – to know, because I think it applies to all of us.
'My concern, however, is always for women, because I feel there's so little encouragement for women in society about ageing. I want women to know they have agency in their 70s and 80s, and don't let anyone ever tell them otherwise.
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Garbage in Dublin: Manson emerges on stage, an absolute badass
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'That's why I wrote that song, those words, and that's why I feel this way. It's important for women to understand they're equally as potent as their male counterparts.
'I don't think Chinese Fire Horse is an angry song; it's a song born of outrage. I'm fed up being labelled angry just because I'm willing to speak out about things like this. I'm not angry: I'm outraged.' She takes a breath. 'There's a big, big difference.'
Over the past 10 years Manson has brought more women to work with the band on touring, management, merchandise and other areas. Doing so, she says, lessens her sense of loneliness in once doggedly male surroundings.
'I decided I wanted to see a change from something I've found myself in for the majority of my 45-year career. I love men. I have a lot of respect for most of the people that I have worked with over the years, but I needed some female energy. I got to the point when it was unsustainable for me to remain in an entirely male environment.'
Let All That We Imagine Be the Light is released via BMG on Friday, May 30th
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Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Irish Times
Re-reading my teenage diaries: joy and pain radiates off the pages
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Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Irish Times
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'There are two words that a southwest Virginian just cannot say,' Bill Smith explains as he sips a whiskey in Good Times, one of the more recent places to open in the town of Big Stone Gap. He pauses for effect. ''Yes.' And 'No'.' Because they don't want to be impolite? 'Well. That's part of it. They also don't want to hang their asses. You can hear it in the jokes. Someone can say something really cutting. And then they'll say, 'Awh, I was just joking with ya.' I came from a place where if you don't answer a question straight, you get: what's the matter, can't you make up your mind?' READ MORE Smith moved from Montana to Big Stone Gap (population 5,114), one of Virginia's many recovering coal towns, 30 years ago. He brought with him a sense of adventure inherited from his mother, who was a big-band singer from Chicago and, later, a renowned drama schoolteacher in Waukesha, Wisconsin. 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By 'out here' he means the pioneer trail in reverse: crossing the fabled Cumberland Gap, the mountain pass that intersects the Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia state lines, and into the triangular wedge of counties in southwest Virginia. He arrived just as the coal companies had begun their exodus, disrupting the deeply established patterns of life throughout Appalachia, the 13-state mountainous region of the United States that has acquired a reputation that is in some ways distinct from and deeper than the country itself. Bill Smith: 'Education was never a priority bcause you could go into the mines and make more than the teacher' Cumberland Gap viewing point Bill Smith doesn't yet consider himself local, 'although it helps that my wife's family's been here 300 years'. He's a natural raconteur and has a fizzing mind with which he bounces through topics and centuries at will. 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Some of the best old-time and bluegrass music in the country is within 100 miles of here. Last Saturday there were three different bands in town. But before the pandemic there weren't really any bars here to speak of. For years, it used to be the front porch.' He explains how the consequences of the pandemic are still taking a toll. 'Too many kids came out of Covid damaged. They were feral. This is our first proper year back in school. The pandemic in this area – we had almost 1/10th of our population die. I lost 14 friends. I think it was over 1,000 people in Wise County.' Something jigs a memory of an inherited story: his wife's great-great grandfather, eight years old and walking for days with his family on the move to Wise County. 'He was carrying the family pewter. And a chair. Well, seems he got real tired of hanging on to the pewter and he chucked it. Piece by piece. Into the woods. But we have that chair still.' Then he says, out of the blue, ' Daniel Boone walked the ground right about my house,' as if the famed pioneer had passed by just last week. Trump country: In the 2024 election Wise County returned Donald Trump with an 81 per cent vote, neighbouring Lee County with 85 per cent The overarching point is that while Smith still considers himself 'an oddity' to the true locals in town and in this part of Appalachia, the richness and singularity of the region has him spellbound. 'It's wild,' he says. 'And it's conservative. And it has cultural depth.' It is, we agree, a long way from Washington, longer than its 430 miles suggest. You can catch a little of Virginia's hauteur in its nickname, 'Old Dominion'. Arlington House, perched above the cemetery, looms over Washington, DC , as the former home of the Confederate general Robert E Lee. If you drive the I-80 and swing a right past Senator Tim Kaine's constituency office in Abingdon, after which the state turns truly mountainous and bewitching, you will finally end up in Lee County, named after the famed general's father. The cross-state drive takes about seven hours, allowing stops for petrol and Dunkin' Donuts. In the 2024 presidential election, Wise County returned Donald Trump with an 81 per cent vote. Neighbouring Lee County voted Trump by 85 per cent. These are thumping returns in counties that can make for grim reading in the statistical data: 27 per cent of people live below the poverty line in Lee County. An unofficial stat: in an area of gorgeous natural beauty, Lee County shows no hotels on the usual listing sites. Barbara Kingsolver, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Demon Copperhead, which is set in southwest Virginia. Photograph: University of Edinburgh/PA It has, more recently acquired a literary significance as the setting for Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver's phenomenally successful, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that transposes the blueprint for David Copperfield on to a live-wire teenager in southwest Virginia during the opioid epidemic that ravaged this part of the state. Kingsolver grew up in Kentucky and lives in Virginia. She has railed, wonderfully, against the authenticity of vice-president JD Vance's memoir Hillbilly Elegy which, she said, was dismissed by neighbours for 'the hollowness, the fact that he isn't really one of us'. In the same 2024 Guardian interview , she said she has, despite the accolades, 'dealt with this condescension, this anti-hillbilly bigotry for a lot of my life'. [ Barbara Kingsolver: 'The first time I set foot in Ireland I felt so at home. Something about the language, the culture' Opens in new window ] Kingsolver is a fearsome defender against all the national prejudices Appalachia has faced down. More impressively, she has put her money where her mouth is. January marked the opening of the Higher Ground recovery centre in the town of Pennington Gap. It's a bungalow dwelling in the heart of the town that has been converted to a refuge for women recovering from addiction. The shelter is funded by Kingsolver, with absolutely no fanfare. Over lunch in the McDonald's down the street, Elizbeth Brooks, who grew up in Lee County and runs the centre, tells me she understands exactly what Kingsolver means by the casual prejudice thrown at Appalachians. 'I feel like it varies. I mean there is a stigma to our area. And we are – I don't know, most people just see those of us who live in Appalachia as hicks and hillbillies and all that. And they do. And … I agree with Barbara. On the TV shows and everything it's all they focus on. They don't focus on the beautiful areas up here. They don't spend time here. 'My own family, when we travel, if you go to a bigger area, people can be rude and disrespectful. Here we are friendly. My dad will wave at every single car. The finger raised from the wheel. Even the counties surrounding Lee County will kind of make jokes … 'Oh they're from Lee County'. Some people take offence. And especially with schools and stuff too. There's … a snobbery.' About eight years ago, one of the worst moments of Brooks's life catapulted her into an unlikely transformation. She was eight months pregnant with her first child when she says she was arrested and, because of previous charges, placed on a Court Recovery programme. She had, in her teens, graduated from alcohol and marijuana to opioids and methamphetamines, dropping out of Wise college and falling into a pattern of addiction. Elizabeth Brooks: 'If you go to a bigger area, people can be rude and disrespectful. Here we are friendly' 'When you are in addiction there is a lot of isolation,' she says. 'You shut everybody out.' A 2019 report by the Washington Post included data analysis recording that, between 2006-2012, 34.9 million opioids, or 120 pills per resident, were shipped into Wise County alone. Brooks regards her eldest child Jayden as 'my miracle baby'. She has been sober since July 7th, 2018, and was working as an addiction counsellor when she was asked to run the new centre. She speaks with Kingsolver regularly, usually on Zoom. 'She's been wonderful. I don't know how she does it because she's a very busy woman.' There are six women in the residence now. 'I do their medications. It's kind of about building up their stability and accountability and getting them stable in the real world. A couple of my girls … they are, I wouldn't say hot-headed, but they are little firecrackers. And their personalities clash a little. So, it is kind of learning how to be emotionally stable as well. I tell them: there is more to recovery than just being sober. You need to work on yourself, get your mental health right, get your job and just be accountable for yourself.' One of the very first residents, Crystal, who is working at the counter in McDonald's, talks about the transformative effect the home has had on her life. Brooks likes that prospective residents be sober for about five or six weeks before taking a place there and returning to employment is part of the deal. But it can be difficult finding a job in Lee County. The Appalachian Regional Commission reports that in Lee between 2018-2022, 26 per cent of people lived in poverty and the average household income was $41,000 (it is $75,000 nationally). Brooks works nine to five. Jayden is autistic. She is due to give birth to her third child this summer. Evenings are busy: weekends a chance to come up for air. 'I tell my girls too – I'm no different from they are or any better because in my recovery, at any point, it's always a battle for me, too, just like it is for them. I've learned a lot about my triggers and staying away from them situations I don't need and that's what keeps me sober. Because I'm not saying I still couldn't have a bad day and go down the wrong path. We were like a runaway train ... I felt like we didn't have any kind of leadership whatsoever — Hank Fannon 'And before my fiance now - a thousand people would tell you I would never be engaged to a police officer in my life. And I would never have been with somebody who treated me with the most respect, that I respect myself with. It's very different now, and I am very grateful.' She and her fiance have held back on their wedding date because of the growing uncertainty over Medicaid changes; her boy is dependent on the treatment he receives through the programme. She is closely tracking the political conversation on autism taking place in the capital. In April, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy pledged 'a massive testing and research effort' to determine the cause of autism. Trump has appeared to suggest that vaccines could be to blame for autism rates, although decades of research have concluded there is no link between the two. [ 'Slippery slope to eugenics': advocates reject Robert F Kennedy jnr's national autism database in US Opens in new window ] 'There aren't many options for my son around here. So that would affect him. I feel like that would have made a really big impact on the election if people knew that. Just because it is going to hurt everyone. And I don't really see the helping part of it. I don't understand how that helps because unless you have a child with autism you don't really – there is nothing that causes it. And I think they could have worded it a lot better.' Hank Fannon: 'Trump is the most patriotic thing that has come through in a long time' Still, this is steadfast Trump country. And the ARC reports slowly climbing figures of median income levels and employment throughout the region. There is no sign of any real crisis of faith in Trump Republicanism here. On the way back from Big Stone Gap, I find Hank Fannon at the telephone in the office of the immaculately tidy tyre business he owns. Like seemingly everyone in this part of the country, Fannon's voice is rich and melodic. A television in the corner of the office is showing Fox News on silent and images of Trump's recent visit to the Middle East. The Fannons are in both the tyre and real estate business. 'It's a little tighter-fisted than it was,' he says. 'But Trump … he's the most patriotic thing that has come through in a long time. That shooting, wherever it was ... that put him in the White House. And the tariff thing is impacting, yeah. I sell some American-made stuff. All the China-built stuff. It's probably raised prices, $20, $30 a tyre. And I can't eat nothin. 'People are subject to doing impulse spending with this kind of stuff. If you need a tyre, it's just like going to the doctor: hurt's bad; 'I gotta get something done now.' But we were like a runaway train the other way. I felt like we didn't have any kind of leadership whatsoever. I knew when Trump came back into play it would tighten up a little – for a while.' But property prices, always modest, are beginning to rise. Appalachia is not immune to the property escalation heist that has gripped America. People are noticing the extraordinary value to be had in this part of the country – and the stunning landscape. We talk for a while about the economic realities of the region. Fannon sighs before answering. 'This is a depressed community, first off. There is a lot of poverty here. So, indirectly I am living off fixed-income people. So … I don't know. It bothers me some. We sell real estate in this region and it has been cheap real estate. But right now ... you can put a sign in the yard. A lady died three weeks ago and her daughter and I went to school together. And it sold in two days.' Joey O'Quinn works part-time in the tourism centre and plays in a band called the Hillbilly Hippies It also sold for well above the asking price. Up in Big Stone Gap, Joey O'Quinn, who works part-time in the tourism centre, is talking to a friend of his, Les Bailey. There's a bottle of gift whiskey on the counter and they joke about never opening a second bottle before noon. Bailey is rushing off to take their mutual friend, Larry Mullins, to the doctor. They all play in a band called the Hillbilly Hippies. Tourism is beginning to make an impression. Big Stone Gap is slowly opening itself up to the idea that it can be an attraction to outsiders, with new restaurants and cafes alongside the staunch jeweller's and legal firms on the main street. It has the natural splendour and the unrivalled music heritage and – the scarcest of commodities – authenticity. The local cafes and restaurants are friendly and without affectation of any sort. O'Quinn, who worked as a regulator with mining companies, believes the future for this part of Virginia lies in tourism, flipping the 'hillbilly' stigma after centuries. 'We have to be sensitive to that balance. This has been an impoverished region, yes, since the 1800s. But there are so many good things in terms of music and the mountains and all that culture.' Close to the tight triangle of land where the three state lines of Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky intersect, people driving the US-58 often do a double take as they pass by Junior Whitt's place. The striking thing about these counties is the absence of Trump banners or mementoes. But Whitt's place is a shrine to Maga-ism. Junior Whitt's place is a shrine to Maga-ism. Photograph: Keith Duggan He is sitting on a sun chair enjoying a smoke when I stop to ask him what inspired all of this. We find ourselves looking at the Confederate flags he has hanging. He says he hangs them because they are part of the history of the state, of the region. Often, strangers stop and ask to take photographs and Whitt will engage them in conversation. 'Well, from what I'm hearing all the time: they are for Trump,' he says in a gentle voice. 'They are not for the other side. I don't go for the transgender stuff and all this critical race theory stuff. I don't go for this stuff and a lot of other people don't go for it. That's why I'm against the Democrats. I don't vote for all that. And a lot of other people say, well, I don't vote for that either. I say, well, it's the same damn package. If you vote for 'em you, vote for it. They say, 'I never thought about it that way; you're right'. Yeah, I'm right. 'This house across the road ... they are big Democrats. We get along and everything. I hear it every day. People from out of state come through, see this, stop and walk around. And they're for Trump too. If the Democrats got back in, they would have destroyed us.' We chat for a while more. When there are no cars passing, it is incredibly serene here. Whitt waves an arm against the blue sky in the vague direction of his childhood home, on a farm near the Pow river. His parents were Democrats. He says his father would turn in his grave if he could see the party now. He sounds suddenly frustrated and tired by the state of American politics. 'See, back then you had some good Democrats. They sat down and talked with people.'
Irish Times
12 hours ago
- Irish Times
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid: An imperfect addition to the lesbians-in-space genre
Atmosphere Author : Taylor Jenkins Reid ISBN-13 : 978-1529152975 Publisher : Hutchinson Heinemann Guideline Price : £20 It's been a good year for lesbians in space. First, the Australian animated film Lesbian Space Princess made its world premiere at the 2025 Berlinale. Now, Taylor Jenkins Reid's ninth novel depicts a – literally – cosmic disaster steered by lesbian astronauts. Set in the early 1980s, Atmosphere follows Joan Goodwin and Vanessa Ford, two fictional women joining Nasa not long after the first American woman on the moon, Sally Ride. As Joan fulfils her dream of training at Houston's Johnson Space Centre, a wave of gay realisation hits her hard and fast. Just as her early infatuation begins to raise questions about how to live with a same-sex partner in a viciously homophobic world – 'You do realise bringing a woman as your date will make you look like a … you know …" – a 1984 mission threatens to take an apocalyptic turn. There's much talk these days about the screenplayification of novels, the claim that writers are replacing interiority with action and dialogue in a bid to get lucratively optioned. Less discussed is the increasingly default presence of cinematically non-linear narratives. What was once an experiment has become the done thing: 1. opening teaser as close to the end as possible, 2. cut to much earlier in the story, 3. interweave the pursuit of both threads until they join definitively at the end. Atmosphere follows this formula. READ MORE I doubt it would bother the author to have this pointed out. In her recent cover interview with Time, Jenkins Reid shot back at critics who assumed she'd ever been trying to write literary fiction: '[M]aybe I love being Candy Land [Jonathan] Franzen.' The novel's feminism operates at a similar emotional temperature: friendly, with a tendency to flatter the 21st-century reader's existing sensibilities She's not a stylist, and that's fine. Franzen can write Franzen's books. Jenkins Reid's job is to write her own. Her sentences convey character, setting and plot without drawing attention to themselves. Unhindered by the road bump of experimental prose, a casual reader might breeze past the insight often packed into short strings of words. But dialogue like this will seep into you if you let it: 'Have you ever been in love?' 'No, I don't think so.' 'Well, it's like a bad cold: it's miserable and then, one day, it's gone.' The humour is gentle rather than uproarious. Only once did I laugh aloud: '… Hank was the recipient of a very large trust fund. It was a fact that Hank wore with complexity." But there are moments that will elicit a soft smile, as when none of Joan's male colleagues make Nasa's final selection: 'No men from our group, huh?' 'No […] I am afraid they were not up to snuff." [ Taylor Jenkins Reid: 'Marriages are messy. Our lives are messy. Convenient truths don't exist' Opens in new window ] The novel's feminism operates at a similar emotional temperature: friendly, with a tendency to flatter the 21st-century reader's existing sensibilities, rather than to prompt any startling self-interrogation. 'Don't thank me for doing the bare minimum,' a male astronaut tells Joan. 'It does a disservice to us both.' I don't disagree. Does anyone reading this? One could reasonably rejoin that Jenkins Reid had never been trying to prompt any ideological awakening. The greater issue is how present-day online the phrase is. 'The bare minimum' has been kicking around the English language for ages, of course, but its application to men being called feminist pioneers for acts of ordinary decency is distractingly contemporary. 'Thank you for your excellent notes on how I can be scared in a less vulnerable way,' Joan says. 'Did she fumble?' she wonders. She's several decades too early for 'vulnerable' to readily signify performatively confessional femininity, and back in the innocent 1980s the verb 'to fumble' still needed an object. The scattering of these moments is too uneven for it to read as an intentional gesture to modern readers. When the language does embody the context, it's thrilling. Here's a liaison with ground control: 'We are go.' 'Guidance?' 'Go.' 'FIDO?', and on for another 20 lines. I had only the vaguest clue what was happening and I loved it; the texture and energy mattered more than the exact meaning. [ Daisy Jones & the Six: Everyone looks perpetually glamorous, but it's a soulless jingle Opens in new window ] I imagine it will divide gay readers that the HIV epidemic is mentioned only once. 'At that very moment, people all over the country were convinced that Aids was a punishment for moral failing,' muses the narrator in autumn 1983. Two paragraphs later, Joan has returned to wishing she could get married. There is little sense of a broader queer community for the astronauts. Their romance takes place in an intergalactic vacuum – or a near-vacuum, to deploy the scientific precision that Joan would want – while gay people at home die en masse. Some will hate this. Others will respond that we already have enough books on the trauma of those years. Even readers who find the intimacy myopic will, I think, be moved by it at the same time: 'Joan had had no idea how quickly you could learn another's body. How swiftly their legs become your legs, their arms your arms.' May the lesbian space genre continue to boom. This book is an imperfect addition, but one that floats. Naoise Dolan's latest novel is The Happy Couple
