“There is no such thing as Women’s Writing. Just as there is no such thing as Left-Handed Writing, Red-Headed Writing, European Writing, Northern Hemisphere Writing, or Writing from the Planet Earth. All of these categories are so large as to be meaningless. Sadly, Women’s Writing is the only one of the above repeatedly used as a stick to beat women who write. Either Women’s Writing is fluffy and inconsequential, full of romps and buttocks – or Women’s Writing is coarse and aggressive and the kind of muck you’d expect from an off-duty stripper in a strop – or Women’s Writing is obsessed with plumbing and bleeding and bonding to whale music. Effectively, Women’s Writing is whatever has most annoyed any given journalist, commentator, academic, or author in the past few books by women they’ve read.”