The male characters we meet in The Cows, meanwhile, are drawn in a more sympathetic, if simplistic, vein. Women’s greatest enemy, it seems, is not the patriarchy. “The irony is that it is you boxing women into these roles, not men,” Cam tells her female host. Indeed, as Cam is vilified by a fellow feminist on radio, O’Porter reveals the central thread that ties the book together.

There is one fight – feminism – but there are many different types of woman, and pleasing them all is impossible.”Īpparently there is nothing like abject humiliation to ensure that we see the best and worst of women. As Cam observes, “Women’s rights are a delicate subject. O’Porter concocts a suitably melodramatic plot to thrust these young strangers together: a public act of masturbation that becomes the sensational news story of the year.Īs each is confronted with the practical reality of another woman’s life they begin to learn the difference between taking an absolute position and accommodating one’s ambitions to suit one’s circumstances. Working in a male-dominated environment, she has to try twice as hard to justify her position and twice as hard to prove herself to the other mums at the school gates.įinally, on the periphery, we encounter the hypercritical harridan Sophie, who has sold herself out to a controlling husband who refuses to acknowledge her independent, sexually liberated past. An award-winning documentary producer, she found herself pregnant after a one-night stand. O’Porter’s characters offer her an opportunity to tackle the subject from a variety of angles.ĭawn O’Porter: the accessibility of her writing style will cement The Cows’ popularity.

Both follow four women as they navigate the embattled landscape of modern womanhood: the difficulty of juggling a professional career with a fraught personal life, the influence of digital media on women's perception of themselves, the contradictions and conflicts of contemporary feminism.īut where Trollope’s characters are women in their late 40s, dealing with the consequences of the choices they have made, O’Porter’s women are a generation younger, poised on the cusp of a key decision: whether to have children. Dawn O'Porter's third novel has much in common with Joanna Trollope's latest book, City of Friends.

The Cows by Dawn O'Porter