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Helen Charman
Helen Charman is a writer and academic based in Glasgow. Her first book, Mother State – a political history of motherhood — is forthcoming from Allen Lane in 2024. She teaches in the English Studies department at Durham University.

Articles Available Online


Attachment Barbies: On Watching Grey’s Anatomy

Essay

March 2023

Helen Charman

Essay

March 2023

In August 2022, ABC announced that Ellen Pompeo, currently the highest-paid actress on American network television, was leaving Grey’s Anatomy, the show on which...

Book Review

May 2021

HOLDING THE ROOM: ON HOLLY PESTER’S ‘COMIC TIMING’

Helen Charman

Book Review

May 2021

The last poem in Holly Pester’s first collection COMIC TIMING (Granta, 2021) is called ‘Villette’; it shares its title...

Due to a clerical error on my part, the current Prime Minister is now living in the box room at our house The former Prime Minister was, of course, replaced at the last election by an almost formless howling mass resembling a fleshy cyst lump This fleshy cyst lump now lives in a city centre flat share with some not quite young, almost professionals It’s an awkward situation but we’re really trying to make the best of it The highly confidential policy documents he leaves in our communal living space give me an illicit thrill but his nightly wailing is very distracting I suppose overall the situation is slightly worse than when Helen decided to sublet her room to an actor but not as bad as Nina and Karen breaking up and continuing to live in the same room They’ve divided the room down the middle with balled up socks and dirty knickers and secretly fuck on the dividing line two out of seven nights a week, leaving the undeniable tang of sex hanging in the space around their faux innocent faces  I’m going through quite a stressful time in the office right now It’s mostly, if not entirely, due to the clerical error, the consequences of which I could never have predicted three or four months ago when certain machinations created the tragic circumstances which led me to commit such a heinous mistake Therefore right now I could do without the Prime Minister’s howling and crying when I get home Certainly life would be improved without his rending of garments and the haunting screams that disturb the air for hours after they have left his so called body But I suppose as long as he pays the rent on time I can cope I’ve left it to Nina to chase him up on that She complains about the responsibility associated with this role but I know she secretly loves the task: every month flogging us until we pay up It seems the weeping sores on my back heal just in time for the next message

Contributor

November 2017

Helen Charman

Contributor

November 2017

Helen Charman is a writer and academic based in Glasgow. Her first book, Mother State – a political history...

Essay

May 2020

Where do I put myself, if public life’s destroyed? On reading Denise Riley

Helen Charman

Essay

May 2020

How do you read someone who doesn’t always want to be read? This is a question I used to...

Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’

Book Review

October 2018

Helen Charman

Book Review

October 2018

Reading Sally Rooney’s second novel Normal People is a compulsive experience. After the navy blue Faber & Faber proofs were sent out in early...
Rendering intimacy impossible, deploy lifeboats (mark yourself safe) Not listening as such, more waiting to speak, above all mark yourself, it’s so important to be safe Carry on, they demand, we’re not reeling / we are reeling Is this the place for a fountain reference? Probably ‘What first attracted you to your wife, sir?’ ‘Her delicacy / her ankles / her hatred of the Tories’                  Alive twice over but that’s a whole life gone too                you know I’m sorry, he holds his hands up, I’m                sorry, he backs away: my conscience couldn’t                keep company with your body I say, your body?                it just made me think: it’s only a nine month stay   The next time you lay a hand on me, I’ll make a perfect gleaming dive into the Thames Aren’t you glad / to be here? I am
Electioneering

Prize Entry

November 2017

Helen Charman


READ NEXT

feature

May 2011

On the Relative Values of Humility and Arrogance; or the Confusing Complications of Negative Serendipity

Annabel Howard

feature

May 2011

On a distinctly drizzly Wednesday evening in February a friend of mine looked at me and said: ‘Only those who...

feature

August 2017

What Makes A Gallery Programme?

Pac Pobric

feature

August 2017

Of his art dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Pablo Picasso once wondered, ‘What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn’t...

Art

May 2016

Sharon Hayes

Edwina Attlee

Art

May 2016

Sharon Hayes’ In My Little Corner of the World, Anyone Would Love You at Studio Voltaire features a five-channel...

 

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