{"id":2337,"date":"2026-01-13T09:53:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T20:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=2337"},"modified":"2026-03-08T09:17:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:17:01","slug":"all-her-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2026\/01\/13\/all-her-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"All Her Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ingrid Horrocks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Te Herenga Waka University Press<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, December 13th 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nine short-stories in Ingrid Horrocks latest compilation beautiful capture the changing shape of women\u2019s lives and identities across time from 1795 to today. From the nurse trying to reintegrate herself into her rural New Zealand family after returning from WWII to the solo mother contending with the micro-aggressions of sanctimonious neighbours, or the university student in Berlin discovering she is not as comfortable with an open relationship as she supposed, their portraits reveal the many ways things have (and have not) changed across generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organisationally and thematically, the collection pivots around the book\u2019s central story, The Silver Ship<\/em>. Informed by Horrocks\u2019 own scholarship, it describes Mary Wollstonecroft\u2019s reaction to having her dreams of founding a community in which women to \u201c[have] their own equality and liberty, and right to reason, written into law\u201d extinguished by the closed ranks of a patriarchy that refuses to acknowledge her agency. Rejecting the story of herself as a mistress abandoned with her illegitimate child she is determined to \u201cpresent no such opportunities for pity\u2026she would be the hero of her own tale\u201d. And, like Mary, each of Horrocks\u2019 women manages, through acts of defiance large or small, to find self-definition and meaning within their own lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite their diversity of setting and circumstance, the stories are are linked in subtle and understated ways each connection a small but pleasurable reward for the observant reader: a secondary character in one story is focus of another, ties of place, blood or marriage are revealed through a passing comment or reference in another,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another point of commonality is the way female identity is defined and constrained by biology, society and, on many instances, motherhood. \u00a0Wollstonecroft\u2019s firm belief that \u201ca mother should touch and hold her child\u201d and her refusal to employ a wet-nurse despite being \u00a0\u201cthought peculiar for suckling her baby herself\u201d stands in stark contrast to Truby King\u2019s view, explored in Marvellous Instruments<\/em>, that women, \u201cdensely ignorant of the duties of maternity, treating babies little better than malnourished calves\u201d must be \u201cobserved, organised and instructed\u201d by men such as himself. Mia\u2019s world in Concrete Box<\/em> has contracted to \u201cpaddled milk and soaked Weetbix mush\u201d, interspersed with moments of calm in which her daughter is attached to her, her son \u201cin a pouch like a baby wallaby, his head furry, all of us flown somewhere else.\u201d Meanwhile in Murmuration<\/em>, Madeline must come to terms with the fact that, although she felt like \u201ca god when he was born\u2026a maker of men,\u201d as an adult he has forged his own path and it is up to her whether she joins him. Even those without children are not immune; Eileen\u2019s anger at her boyfriend\u2019s dalliances in Woman\u2019s Choice Night<\/em> is heightened, for example, by the fact the other woman has a baby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although some may find it disheartening that childbearing remains so central to our identity as women, the possibility of making the world better for future generations makes the fight worthwhile. And therein lies the hope that make All Her Lives<\/em> a joy to read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ingrid Horrocks Te Herenga Waka University Press Otago Daily Times, December 13th 2025 The nine short-stories in Ingrid Horrocks latest compilation beautiful capture the changing shape of women\u2019s lives and identities across time from 1795 to today. From the nurse trying to reintegrate herself into her rural New Zealand family after returning from WWII to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2386,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[498,370,500,18,375],"class_list":["post-2337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-498","tag-fiction","tag-nz-author","tag-odt","tag-short-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2337"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2351,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337\/revisions\/2351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}