A LOVE STORY FOR THE GENERATION LIVING IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

This book interrogates the significance of the revival and reformulation of the romance genre in the postmillennial period. Emma Roche examines how six popular novels, published between 2005 and 2015 (Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, Gone Girl, Sharp Objects and The Girl on the Train), reanimate and modify recognisable tropes from the romance genre to reflect a neoliberal and postfeminist cultural climate. As such, Roche argues, these novels function as crucial spaces for interrogating and challenging those contemporary gender ideologies. Throughout the book, Roche addresses and critiques several key attributes of neoliberal postfeminism, including a pervasive emphasis on individualism and personal responsibility; an insistent requirement for self-monitoring, self-surveillance, and bodywork; the celebration of consumerism and its associated pleasures; the prescription of mandatory optimism and suppressing one’s ‘negative’ emotions; and the endorsement of choice as a primary marker of women’s empowerment. While much critical attention has been devoted to those attributes and their pernicious effects, Roche argues that one crucial repercussion has been largely overlooked in contemporary cultural criticism: how these ideologies function together to effectively sanction gender-based violence. Thus, Roche exploits textual analysis to demonstrate the subtle ways in which neoliberal postfeminism can augment women’s vulnerability to male violence.

A trusted theologian analyzes what Jesus said about his return and the last days.

In this playful and informative exploration of the science behind how to choose a great mate, acclaimed relationship psychologist Dr. Ty Tashiro explores how to find enduring love. Dr. Tashiro translates reams of scientific studies and research data into the first book to revolutionize the way we search for love. His research pinpoints why our decision-making abilities seem to fail when it comes to choosing mates and how we can make smarter choices. Dr. Tashiro has discovered that if you want a lifetime of happiness--not just togetherness--it all comes down to how you choose a partner in the first place. With wit and insight, he explains the science behind finding a soul mate and distills his research into actionable tips, including: Why you get only three wishes when choosing your ideal partner. Why most people squander their wishes and end up in unfulfilling relationships. How wishing for the three traits that really matter can help you find enduring love. Illustrated using entertaining stories based on real-life situations and backed by scientific findings from fields such as demography, sociology, medical science and psychology, Dr. Tashiro provides an accessible framework to help singles find their happily-ever-afters.

A 2021 ‘BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR’ – THE INDEPENDENT ‘A mouthpiece for our anxieties and a tonic for our hearts.’ Charly Cox ‘Funny and honest.’ Pandora Sykes ‘Offers readers of all stripes and ages a great overview of relationships in the digital era’. Matt Haig

This lively new volume of essays examines what happens now in 21st century fiction. Fresh theoretical approaches to writers such as Salman Rushdie, David Peace, Margaret Atwood, and Hilary Mantel, and identifications of 21st-century themes, tropes and styles combine to produce a timely critical intervention into genuinely contemporary fiction.

This book discusses a rich variety of voices from the margins and experiences of living in the postmillennial globalised world represented in selected novels by Irish-Canadian, British, American, Serbian, Australian, Iraqi and Māori authors. Contributions focus on illustrative examples of the contemporary novel that reflects acute awareness of globalizing processes and the rising tension between global and local identities, discourses and trends. In its diversity, the book serves to map voices from the new margins overshadowed by the intense pressure of globalization. Whether these new margins are ethnic minorities living in globalized centres of contemporary metropoles or authors whose national, local or regional voices are marginalized by works with more global ones, they are equally deserving of the attention of general readers, university students and literary scholars. The book will primarily appeal to scholars in the fields of literary, gender, postcolonial and food studies, but will also be of interest to a broader readership involved in explorations of literary works in the context of globalizing processes.