The 48 numbered poems take us through a gallery of exes and significant others where we encounter rage, pain, guilt, and love. The poems varied in how evocative and relatable they were, but Moore's voice is readable, compelling, and resonant throughout.

The act of giving in to over-arching male demand is repeated often here and the repetition is as damning of a kind of assumptive misogyny as it remains mostly unacknowledged. It’s not a matter of the words; your burger line is just fine, and you could also suggest splitting things equitably.I know women like us tend to get a bad rap for being single (especially over 40), but no one says anything to men about it, especially since a lot of them spent the first half of adulthood doing just what we're doing now.

If you're asking them why they're single or why they've never been married you're putting them on the spot and asking for an explanation, judging them. Chair of judges Fatima Bhutto said the collection was “full of dangerous wit and knowing humour that speaks directly to the reader in a hugely pleasurable way”, while fellow judge Nadine Aisha Jassat said it was a “phenomenal and powerful collection, and one I urgently want to share with everyone I know”. They are poems that speak with a clear, unapologetic, feminist voice, breaking the taboos of acceptance and denial. Although many of the poems recount incident after incident of women being belittled, objectified or preyed upon, the poems themselves subvert this power imbalance in all sorts of ways, using language to reclaim some of that power, to celebrate female desire and physicality.The overall decrease in the share of 40-year-olds who have married is especially notable because the share of 40-year-olds who had completed at least a bachelor’s degree was much higher in 2021 than in 1980 (39% vs. An episode with a taxi driver where casual banter becomes increasingly threatening rings only too true.