This one was a bit far-fetched back in the day. Still, Forsyth knows how to spin a yarn.

Monthly BookCrossing meeting/boozeup at King O'Malley's in Civic, purveyor of fine cider and awesome wedges.

Had a merry arvo, and even took home a book or two. Woot!

I picked this book up at the Bookcrossing meet at King O'Malley's Pub. Thank you.

Instead of the usual comments on the story I am going to have a bit of a rant here.
Frederick Forsyth appears to consider females as irrelevant. As a female this really bugged me.
The few females that appear in the book, with the exception of the mention of Maggie Thatcher (but who doesn't actually appear as a character in the book), are in periphery roles such as wives of the main characters, and even then the appearance in the role of wife is brief and almost invisible. Even in one of the few moments when a woman does have another role apart from 'wife', females are not given a lot of respect, such as a female reporter being described as a "girl reporter". The only female to have a role in this story connected with British intelligence, though treated as confident in her job, is still at the same time treated differently than the male characters. She is addressed as Miss (sorry, name forgotten), not say Jane Smith, whereas a male would be addressed as John Smith. The way she is also described, I doubt a male character would be similarly described. In Frederick Forsyth's world we are virtually incapable of filling any role but invisible wife. Maybe it would have been unrealistic for female characters to fill the SAS roles, but there were plenty of other roles they could have filled, such as police constable, etc, but character after character would be tiresomely male. His description of some protesters showed his prejudice against females. Here he gave full rein to his opinion (both political and anti-female). "mainly female and possessed of the strangest personal habits, who had infested the fields and set up shanty camps on patches of common land." Huh! "Strangest personal habits"..."infested" Not good little wives, Mr Forsyth, that know their place!! Then he writes, "There were also hundreds of equally concerned housewives, working men, teachers and school-children." Where was the mention of working women? It seems only housewives are respectable women.
Despite my opinion of his treatment of women in this story, I found the story to be a page turner. I would have marked it higher, except for my unease with a story where women have been mostly hidden.

Released in the Red Telephone Library in Little Rissington, Gloucestershire, UK.



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