Tabitha Carvan
This Is Not A Book About Benedict Cumberbatch
Harper Collins Australia, 2022
If you feel that sense that there is something missing from your life, some gap between who you are on the inside and who you are on the outside - then this is the book for you.
This is, as the title says, not actually a book about Benedict Cumberbatch.
In fact, it's a book about women and what we love, about what happens to women's passions after we leave adolescence and how the space for joy in our lives is squeezed ever smaller as we age, and why. More importantly, it's about what happens if you subvert that narrative and simply love something like you used to.
Drawing upon her personal experience of unexpectedly falling for the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch while stuck at home with two young children, Carvan challenges the reader to stop instinctively resisting the possibility of experiencing pleasure. Hers is clarion rallying cry: find your thing, whatever it may be, and love it like your life depends on it.
Funny, intelligent, transporting and liberating, this book is a total joy.
“Intimate, self-deprecating ... like an Australian Caitlin Moran or Dolly Alderton ... an easy, lighthearted read about serious subject matter: feminism, passion, relationships and creativity, and owning the strength of the passions felt in childhood and adolescence.”
About the Author
Tabitha Carvan is a science writer for the Australian National University and a freelance features writer on the side, focusing on issues of identity, family and pop culture. Her writing has appeared in over a dozen different publications from Crikey to Junkee; Overland to Offbeat Home; Popula to MamaMia. She lives in Canberra and can be found at http://www.tabithacarvan.com/
