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Learning Difficulties
It's 1976.
Maggie Thatcher hasn't started on the welfare state and the comprehensives are teeming with lefties who still hope for a fair future. People like...
Jenny, O-level student, looking for true love -- with her teacher
Julian, head of department, libertine manque, who sees nothing wrong in taking Jenny to the Stonehenge free festival
Angela, wife and domestic martyr, hoping only that Julian will remain faithful
And feminist Celia, who reckons that blackmail will yield the greatest good for the greatest number.
Think abuse is funny? If so, you've missed the point. But the people Jenny meets on her own personal road to Damascus are pretty amusing: Spike the Punk, Sam the Sceptical Nurse, and Richard the Rogue Psychiatrist.
They aren't the only men in this book that will make you want to cheer. And once they all get mixed up with a women's consciousness-raising group embedded in a Marxist collective, you've got a romp to the finishing post that reads like Dickens in suburbia.
Maggie Thatcher hasn't started on the welfare state and the comprehensives are teeming with lefties who still hope for a fair future. People like...
Jenny, O-level student, looking for true love -- with her teacher
Julian, head of department, libertine manque, who sees nothing wrong in taking Jenny to the Stonehenge free festival
Angela, wife and domestic martyr, hoping only that Julian will remain faithful
And feminist Celia, who reckons that blackmail will yield the greatest good for the greatest number.
Think abuse is funny? If so, you've missed the point. But the people Jenny meets on her own personal road to Damascus are pretty amusing: Spike the Punk, Sam the Sceptical Nurse, and Richard the Rogue Psychiatrist.
They aren't the only men in this book that will make you want to cheer. And once they all get mixed up with a women's consciousness-raising group embedded in a Marxist collective, you've got a romp to the finishing post that reads like Dickens in suburbia.
316 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2012
1 person is currently reading
7 people want to read
About the author
Gill Jackman
6 books3 followersWorking backwards, I'm 64 and have just retired after 26 years as a psychotherapist. I've been writing forever, most recently as part of a writing group run by Lindsay Clarke which I was part of from 2005 to 2018. This particular novel was inspired by a devastating love affair which ended in tears and madness in 2004.
Prior to that, I trained as a counsellor in the 1990s – this led to a great deal of concern about the dumbing down of this training, about which I have written extensively (see www.counselling-southwest.co.uk). Many of these concerns have made their way into The Fantasist's Assistant as has a far deeper understanding of the way in which the experience of loss is massively impacted by the history of the client's past losses.
I got into counselling through working as a support worker for young people who had just left the care system. I have a particular fondness for angry teenagers, being extremely angry myself.
In 1987 I did a masters in Creative Writing at Lancaster University with David Craig and am still in touch with my colleagues from that time: Alison Macleod and Hugh Dunkerly, though Dorothy Nimmo has died. In 1985 I became a single parent so have had to earn a living for both myself and my daughter. I completed my BA at Lancaster in Independent Studies: Women and Literature in 1984 while becoming embroiled in the Rajneeshee movement. Lancaster was full of them. Oh – page nearly up: I left school at 17, went to FE college late and I still go to the Glastonbury Festival to work every year. The Fantasist's Assistant is about as far from chick-lit as you can get.
Prior to that, I trained as a counsellor in the 1990s – this led to a great deal of concern about the dumbing down of this training, about which I have written extensively (see www.counselling-southwest.co.uk). Many of these concerns have made their way into The Fantasist's Assistant as has a far deeper understanding of the way in which the experience of loss is massively impacted by the history of the client's past losses.
I got into counselling through working as a support worker for young people who had just left the care system. I have a particular fondness for angry teenagers, being extremely angry myself.
In 1987 I did a masters in Creative Writing at Lancaster University with David Craig and am still in touch with my colleagues from that time: Alison Macleod and Hugh Dunkerly, though Dorothy Nimmo has died. In 1985 I became a single parent so have had to earn a living for both myself and my daughter. I completed my BA at Lancaster in Independent Studies: Women and Literature in 1984 while becoming embroiled in the Rajneeshee movement. Lancaster was full of them. Oh – page nearly up: I left school at 17, went to FE college late and I still go to the Glastonbury Festival to work every year. The Fantasist's Assistant is about as far from chick-lit as you can get.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 17, 2019
I was pleasantly surprised by this story of a young woman growing up in the 1970s, against a backdrop of developing feminism.
May 22, 2016
This book has the potential to be brilliant, but there are scenes where it's unclear what is happening; quite a lot of dream scenes which need clear signposting, and some where the layout of buildings is unclear so we don't know where people are.
I persevered and enjoyed, but I would like to work less hard and enjoy a book, and less of a puzzle.
I persevered and enjoyed, but I would like to work less hard and enjoy a book, and less of a puzzle.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews