Unmentionable

September 15, 2016

Welcome to a highly irreverent tour of the darker sides of the Victorian age. Popular history writer and blogger Oneill points out that although films and fiction set in this period have great appeal today, they omit significant parts of the less-than-comfortable aspects of the time, including bad hygiene, poor medical knowledge resulting in hack treatments, and restrictions on social interactions. The author's wicked sense of humor saves the subject from devolving into a dry tome, instead providing laugh-out-loud moments on the most unthinkable and unmentionable subjects. The brilliance of this study is Oneill's ability to transport readers back in time and have them experience the day-to-day life of women battling the issues of the era. In doing so, this work both educates and amuses in its historical approach of the unseen and unseemly sides of the time. VERDICT This fun romp of a book will appeal to history aficionados and lovers of the Victorian age and its etiquette, as well as anyone who enjoys a good laugh at the oddly absurd. [See "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 9/1/16, p. 27.]--Stacy Shaw, Orange, CA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2016
Twenty-first-century women who are tired of living with the oppressive expectations demanded of the female sex might think that things were somehow better in the nineteenth century. A humor writer with a passion for history, Oneill leads readers by the petticoat as she tracks the history of 1800s women's fashion, hygiene, sex, and social mores. She wittily excerpts the writings of nineteenth-century doctors and reformers who miraculously transformed misogyny into science, advising women on everything from how to bathe, apply makeup, and stand so your breasts don't sag to how to properly menstruate and how to win a man. Hello, Slattern, Oneill wryly addresses the reader, whose assumed romantic view of the nineteenth century she works hard to dismantle. The constant rebukes (though a unique approach) get old and have a way of outshining the material she presents. Yet this is a fascinating look into the shocking pseudoscience of the 1800s in which Oneill sheds new light on the origins of today's misogyny, double standards, and just plain mystery surrounding women that, maddeningly enough, persist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)