David Gelber
Behind Closed Doors
Family Secrets: Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day
By Deborah Cohen
Viking 371pp £20
‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’. When Philip Larkin launched his broadside against parenthood at the start of the 1970s, the traditional family had already been consigned to the tumbril. During the previous decade, a ragtag cluster of forces, from the psychiatrist R D Laing and the social anthropologist Edmund Leach to the Gay Liberation Front and the nascent feminist movement, had denounced this once-hallowed institution as a cabaret of dysfunctionality, a cradle of repression and a coven of abuse. ‘The initial act of brutality against the average child is the mother’s first kiss,’ wrote Laing, in a typically pugnacious pronouncement. From this seemingly innocuous gesture, every other imaginable form of injury and distress proceeded.
In Family Secrets, the social historian Deborah Cohen seeks to amend this vision of perdition and rescue the family from the modish opprobrium it has suffered since the first dawn of the sexual revolution. The tight helix of intolerance and authoritarianism that Laing and his disciples condemned was, Cohen argues,
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm