ALL HER LIVES (UQP 2025) by Ingrid Horrocks is a collection of nine very different stories – varied times and settings – that all have in common revolutionary and feminist themes. Many of the stories are loosely connected either through situation or through the casual introduction of characters – or sometimes the ancestors or generational offspring of characters.
The central ideas are inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft, the radical thinker of the 1700’s (whose daughter, Mary Shelley, wrote FRANKENSTEIN). Wollstonecraft struggled with love, desire, responsibility, duty, ambition, loss and activism in her time, and one story, THE SILVER SHIP, is based on the true details of her adventures as she investigated what happened to a hoard of silver treasure either lost or stolen by a ship’s captain. Although some of this tale is necessarily imagined, much has been gleaned from the known and recorded facts of this fascinating incident.
As with all short story collections, even those interlinked, every reader will have their favourites. This is perhaps especially true in a collection such as this where the genres and styles and timelines are so very different – stories are set as far back as 1795, right up to 1919, 1955 and up to the present day, with the final story a mystical, imaginative conversation that transverses even death.
I particularly loved Evie on Branch, about a young woman who has served as a nurse during the First World War, returning to her family farm – her vision and attitudes much changed from her time away on the Front. I also love The Usual Spiel, set in 1995, which explores issues of sexual abuse, consent and victim-blaming. Murmuration, about a mother and son relationship, the woman visiting the son overseas in traumatising circumstances after a years-long hiatus, is also particularly moving. But every reader will have their own favourite.
Horrocks writes with empathy, an eye for detail, and an innate ability to incorporate research of one theme, incident or historical event and then to weave around it a highly readable and relatable story. She writes of women who crave freedom, navigate desire, escape duty and dream of unimaginable futures. Each is extraordinary, and each is determined to live life on their own terms and in their own way.