It's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour Blurred Lines by Hannah Begbie.
Hannah Begbie studied Art History at Cambridge University. She went on to become a talent agent, representing BAFTA and Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning writers and comedians for fifteen years. She also enrolled in The Novel Studio course at City University, winning that year’s new writing prize.
The book she developed there became her debut novel, MOTHER, which later went on to win the Joan Hessayon Award for New Writers from the RNA. The TV rights were snapped up by Clerkenwell Films (Lovesick, Misfits) after a heated auction, with screenwriter Tom Edge (The Crown, Judy) attached. She lives in north London with her husband and their two sons.
Follow @hannahbegbie on Twitter, on Amazon, on Goodreads, Visit hannahbegbie.com, Buy Blurred Lines
About the book
A compulsive, literary domestic suspense set to spark debate. When Becky accidentally sees her boss with a woman who isn’t his wife, she’s horrified but keeps her counsel – she owes Matthew so much for all he’s done for her career. But when the same woman accuses him of rape and asks for the witness to come forward, Becky doesn’t know what to do.
Was what she saw rape? Or is this a young actress looking to get ahead? And can Becky separate her own traumatic past from the present? As Becky attempts to untangle these blurred lines, she must risk everything to find the truth…
Becky is a woman trying to get her foot further than the first rung on the ladder of success in the world of film making. To do so she has to have her boss Matthew on side - so when she walks in on him, and a woman who isn't his wife, getting hot and heavy on the floor in his house - she walks straight back out and pretends it all never happened.
Until the unknown woman starts making uncomfortable waves about what Matthew did or didn't do. Then Becky has to make choices, which are muddied by her own past and difficult experiences as a young girl.
Just going to throw this out there too - that Becky's reaction of denial, disbelief and talking herself into the more positive and convenient narrative of what she saw, is a direct result and response due to her own experiences.
It's a dark domestic thriller that couldn't be more timely given the #MeToo movement and the Weinstein scandal in particular. Begbie really captures the rock and the hard place women get caught between. If you go against the system, the systemic sexual abuse and harassment of women by powerful men in this patriarchal society, then chances are you will detonate a grenade right underneath you. If you stay quiet and support the abusive system you become part of the problem and you betray women or victims. Career or clear conscience. Submission or fight?
I would love to go into the finer details of what happened to Becky, but it would give too much of the plot away. Needless to say Begbie delivers the kind of read that will be the subject of discussion and perhaps even controversy. I think that is absolutely a good thing. We need to question the way society, especially women and girls, are taught and groomed to accept a status quo of transgressions against them. To believe them when they have the courage to speak out instead of judging them, disparaging victims and ultimately destroying or almost destroying anyone who speaks out.
How many of us remain silent even now? Would you speak out?
Buy Blurred Lines at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Published by HarperFiction / 20th August /PB £7.99. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Waterstones.
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