Name: Radio Girls
ISBN: 9780451475565

Sarah-Jane Stratford

A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title, that may also include a folder.

Radio Girls

Sarah Sammis

I spent the whole summer reading this one.

http://www.pussreboots.pair.com/blog/...

Stark Koenig

While I am grateful to Sarah-Jane Stratford for bringing to light the nearly forgotten force that was Hilda Matheson, I was actually more interested in Matheson as a character than in main character Maisie. Matheson is brought to life in this novel as a delightfully irreverent, mold-breaking, unstoppable woman. I loved her! 

However, it seemed a bit counter to the project of highlighting women's accomplishments in the history of radio and media to attribute some of the real life contributions of real life Hilda Matheson to the fictional main character who has been Mary Sued into this book. On at least two separate occasions Maisie suggests some idea to Hilda, who then turns these ideas into groundbreaking programs on the BBC. The problem is that these were real programs that were really brought forth by Matheson, who was really changing the world. It is clear that the author truly admired Matheson and wanted to bring her exciting, mysterious, indomitable character to light, but taking her real life accomplishments and crediting them to another woman quite undermines that project. And in this case it also happens to continue an unfortunate tradition of attributing the contributions of queer people throughout history to their straight counterparts. 

Oh and there's a mystery somewhere in this book, too. It wasn't a bad story, but as I mentioned in the beginning, the parts of the novel dedicated to Matheson and her bold spirit outshone the rest of the story. I found myself wishing I was just reading a fictionalized story about Matheson herself, living a double life making media history by day and solving international intrigues by night. Or something.

Radio Girls

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