A Still Life by Josie George review – memoir of a mystery illness Blake Morrison
Josie George doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. The doctors don’t know either, though for 30-odd years they’ve been coming up with different ideas. Any exertion or stimulation exhausts her. There are times when she’s too weak to leave the house. A single mum with a nine-year-old son and a mobility scooter, she never knows how her health will be from one day to the next. It sounds like the material for a misery memoir. But the miracle of
A Still Life – as much a miracle as her determination to write it – is its joyousness.
Updated Jan 03, 2021 | 08:14 IST
A woman named Josie George from the UK began the project in 2020 as a part of her New Year s resolution. Temperature Blanket for 2020. | Photo Credit: Twitter
If you have been on Twitter recently, you may have seen many netizens posting pictures of colourful sweaters on their timeline.
Wondering what that could be? Well, the answer is simple.
It all started with a British woman named Josie George’s New Year resolution in 2020 that involved her knitting every day for 365 days. Two rows were knitted per day that led to her finishing the mega project at the beginning of the new year.
Woman turned 2020 into art project by knitting 3m scarf with 1kg wool. She is not alone
Woman turned 2020 into art project by knitting 3m scarf with 1kg wool. She is not alone
A woman turned 2020 into a big art project by knitting a giant scarf using 1kg of wool. With the scarf, she recorded the temperature every day in the past year. Other Twitter users also unveiled their projects as 2020 ended.
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Woman knits giant scarf to record temperature in 2020
2020 was a weird year. However, people did try to make the most of it by involving themselves in several projects. Some began it with unique New Year s resolution, like the Twitter user, Josie George, whose resolution was to knit every day, using the threads to document the daily temperatures of 2020.
Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera / Viking
Several authors tackle colonialism in very different ways, from
Alex Renton confronting his own family’s involvement in slavery in
Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Enslaving Past (Canongate), and
Sathnam Sanghera in
Kehinde Andrews, who rather more controversially takes on capitalism and racism together in
The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World (Allen Lane).
Gender and Identity Politics
Likewise gender and identity politics get a good look-in, from
Julie Bindel’s manifesto,
Feminism for Women (Constable) to
You Are Not the Man You Are Supposed To Be: Into The Chaos of Modern Masculinity (Bloomsbury) by founder of the Book of Man website