I have always looked forward to reading Mary Cummins's "About Women" column in The Irish Times, and this compilation has reminded me why. Two things: one, when she says she is writing about all women, she means it so, in these pages, you will find, side by side, Margaret Thatcher, office cleaners, mothers, Princess Diana, daughters, fat women, older women, nurses, and almost every other woman imaginable. The second thing that dawned on me as I read the articles was the way in which the analysis often picks up and makes connections between what might otherwise seem unconnected experiences of women's lives.
In her own foreword, Mary talks of herself as the public part of an unseen network, one voice in a debate that is sometimes searching and slow and sometimes sharp and furious". It is an apt description, but downplays the role which Mary Cummins plays in taking sometimes mundane, at other times exceptionally topical, issues and with a mix of courage, a critical eye and a sharp wit, offers a new insight. It is a tribute to her always critical eye that readers are never sure whether they will be wholly reinforced or absolutely infuriated by an analytic twist that shows up their own comfortable world view.
So, in this selection from many articles, what is the reader to be reminded of? Well, there is the brilliant and disturbing piece about nursing homes: "I rail against the society which in a hoop and a skip of one generation is consigning its oldies to reservations. Unreservedly I condemn the sanctimonious country populated by people who bless themselves and push their mothers and fathers into institutions, sanitised with names straight out of Trollope, Beatrice Potter, or picked from the litany of saints."
The topical columns, which have dealt with Norma Major, Cherie Booth (or Blair) and Princess Diana, remain as fresh as the day they were written. They deal with the lives of three women we might think of as being remote in their life styles and positions, but Mary focuses on themes in their lives which mirror the experience of many. For Norma and Cherie, there is the obvious no win - stay in the background, be "nice, sensible, loyal and kind" - or there is the apoplexy inducing refusal to be used as a prop for a husband's photocalls, which involves having a career (Cherie Booth is one of Britain's leading QCs).
And then there is Princess Di: "... this hitherto silent woman calmly told them her side of the story . . . Her steely resolve was - and she described bits of her years in the attic - pretty damn devastating. Then she went about her business of reclaiming her 50 per cent of the house, the business and booty."
It emerges clearly from this book that despite the many difficult and complex issues which remain to be addressed if women are to have equal chances, women's own power is making itself felt. This fact shines through in the article here about nurses and in Mary Cummins's enthusiasm for the work of Naomi Wolf.
But the strength of this book lies in its identification of issues which are at the root of all women's experience in society. In an early piece, written in January 1993 following the murder of Patricia O'Toole, there is a description of the impact of cases of violence against women on the lives of most women, a theme returned to in 1996 after the murder of Marilyn Rynn. And there are articles which remind us all that our responses - as women and men, and as politicians has been wholly inadequate.
As Seanad correspondent, Mary has considerable insight - into the working of Dail Eireann, the position of women in political parties, the undervaluing of women secretaries working in the Dail, and into the way in which equality commitments collide with commitment to power. Her reference to quotas - the resistance to them as an equality measure and their ready application in other circumstances - is a valuable reminder to women that responses to equality strategies are not always what they seem.
This book is a great read - amusing, challenging, thought and, I hope, action provoking. I couldn't put it down, despite having read each and every column before. The sooner Mary is hack - word processor poised scalpel like to dissect the issues of today - the better.