The Whole Woman: The No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller - Softcover

Greer, Germaine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552774340 ISBN 13: 9780552774345

Publisher: Black Swan, 2007

Synopsis

Germaine Greer proclaims that the time has come to get angry again! Modern feminism has become the victim of unenlightened complacency, and what started out in the Sixties as a movement for liberation has become one that has sought and settled for equality.

With fiery rhetoric, authoritative insight, outrageous humour and broad-ranging debate, Greer shows that, although women have indeed come a very long way in the last thirty years, the notion of our 'having it all' has disguised the persistent discrimination and exploitation that continues to exist for women in the basic areas of health, sex, politics, economics and marketing.

Erudite, eccentric, provocative and invigorating, Germaine Greer once again sets the agenda for the future of feminism. Here is all the polemical power that sold over a million copies of The Female Eunuch and kept its author at the heart of controversy ever since. The Whole Woman was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller for five weeks when it was first published in 1999, and was hailed by the critics as a 'polemical bomb' (Guardian) and as required reading for thinking adults everywhere.

About this title

Review:

For women born in the immediate post-war period there were the years BG and AG--"before Greer" and "after Greer". It's all too easy to underestimate it's influence, but the fact is that in 1970 every self-respecting woman on the Left owned a copy of The Female Eunuch. Greer's book broke the ground that women of today stand on--her unique stance combined outrageous humour and assertiveness to lead the way forward for women who wanted to take control of their lives.

Thirty years later in The Whole Woman, Greer is ready to get angry again. Picking up where she left off, she analyses the invasive ways in which the health industry persuades women into having their bodies and reproductive systems "managed". Greer lays out the facts about the high failure rate and devastating side effects of in vitro fertilisation, and the incongruence between the "success" of breast implants in achieving the "perfect" mammary to please men and the continuing failures in detecting and treating increasingly prevalent breast cancer.

Greer's polemic has the confident virtuosity of wit and maturity. Celebrating women's successes, The Whole Woman is a more positive book than The Female Eunuch. Yet again, Greer has put her head above parapets others still fear to scale, and looked into the realities of the present as well as the possibilities for the future for the whole of women's lives. --Lisa Jardine

Review:

"Into the pale politeness of post-feminism, Greer has thrown a polemical bomb . . . Greer's acid anger comes as a surprising reminder of what the point of a feminist book was meant to be. It is funny, unforgiving, unapologetic, unappeasing." (Decca Aitkenhead Guardian)

"Don't underestimate this book. Its power, like that of The Female Eunuch, lies in the virtuosity and wit of its questions. Its capacity will force us to stop and think." (Lisa Jardine Observer)

"Three cheers for Greer . . . She makes every other feminist writer look like pallid fast food, devoid of vitamins and roughage." (Lesley Garner Evening Standard)

"This is a serious book which it is impossible to be neutral about." (Gemma Hussey Irish Independent)

"Reading The Whole Woman has been a mega-vitamin shot. I feel rearmed, revitalised." (Cath Kenneally The Australian)

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Swan
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0552774340
• ISBN 13: 9780552774345
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464