She Must Be Mad by Charly Cox

January 20, 2019 Kirsty Hanson

So before you go into reading this review, I just want to point out that there are two sections: the main review, and then at the end, there’s an update. I read this poetry collection for the first time in January 2019 and my feelings about it were ‘so so’. I read it for a second time in November 2020 and found it a little bit more enjoyable to read. The ‘update’ section at the end of the review are my thoughts after reading it for a second time!

She Must be Mad explores coming-of-age: the pain and beauty of love, the relief and the agony of turning from girl to woman, the isolation of an untethered mind and the power and subjugation of the body.

Charly captures the formative experiences of today’s young women from the poignant to the prosaic in writing that is at once witty, wry and heartfelt. Wayward nights out that don’t go as planned; the righteous anger at those men with no talent or skill or smarts who occupy the most powerful positions in the world; the strange banality of madness and, of course, the hurt and indecision of unrequited love.

For every woman surviving and thriving in today’s world, for every girl who feels too much; this is a call for communion, and you are not alone.

Honestly? I don’t know why I do this to myself. After reading the Women are Some Kind of Magic collection by Amanda Lovelace, I realised the contemporary poetry isn’t for me. I mean, yeah, I can relate to the poems on an emotional level, but the poems themselves never really grasped me. The same goes for She Must Be Mad.

I admire Charly Cox and her talent for putting her feelings onto paper, to showing the world these raw feelings. but when I finished reading the poetry collection, I just felt… ‘meh.’ There is a mix of prose and poems, detailing different events of life, and different feelings that women (or people in general) can go through and feel, and don’t get me wrong, some of the poems such as ‘All I Wanted Was Some Toast’, and ‘Kindness’ are ones that I really felt, and really relate to.

“Find the contented without the contention of giving away half of yourself

And see that letting go isn’t giving in…”

– Charly Cox, She Must Be Mad: Mesh of Kisses

There are four sections to this collection: love, mind, body, and age. I think I related to the ‘mind’ section more than anything else because Cox spoke of depression and anxiety, which are two things that I go through personally daily. I felt myself nodding along to what I was reading and agreeing with what she was saying. Sometimes, you just need other people to put into words what you’re feeling, I guess.

I think the main reason why this book is rated 3 stars and not any higher is because the rhyming sometimes seemed quite messy, and forced, which then took away from what would be a positive reading experience. I also that the prose style of writing didn’t really add anything to the collection, and that Cox should have just kept to the poetry style of writing.

“And now all I want

Is for the history before us

To erase in diluted drops…”

– Charly Cox, She Must Be Mad: Doubletree by Hilton

After I had finished reading this collection, I looked at some other reviews on Goodreads, and many people had said that they thoroughly enjoyed the audiobook version and maybe that was my problem,? Maybe I should have listened to this instead.

UPDATE:

Okay, so it’s November 2020 and I’m turning 25 in two days. I don’t know what made me do this, but I was looking over all of the poetry books that I had, just wanting to find something that I could connect to. I saw my copy of She Must Be Mad – remembered I hadn’t been a fan – and picked it up, sifting through the pages looking for a poem that would attract my attention. I got annoyed at myself for not taking the time to read it properly, so I turned to the beginning of the poetry collection and started reading it. Slowly. With a purpose. And I noticed that I could relate to a lot more poems (albeit still in the mind, body, and age sections, not so much the love section).

“you care so deeply that when you are full you feel you have no choice but to spit everything out. To excel in purging all that you are and all that you hate …”

– Charly Cox, She Must Be Mad: Hospital Visits

I don’t know whether this experience came with the fact that I was nearly two years older than when I first read it, or whether I was just in a better mind space. Either way, instead of giving this book 3 stars, I’ve decided to up the rating to 3.75.

Disclaimer: this book was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review