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This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch (Tabitha Carvan, HarperCollins)

When Tabitha Carvan suddenly falls in love with the actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who she has never met, she doesn’t know what to make of it. Her growing obsession simultaneously puzzles, embarrasses and intrigues her so she sets out to understand women’s passions, those deemed embarrassing and unserious by society. This book takes the reader back to Internet 2.0, the BBC series Sherlock and the personal essays that characterised the 2010s, and the author’s blogging credentials are clear from her intimate, self-deprecating writing style. She sounds like an Australian Caitlin Moran or Dolly Alderton. Carvan explores what her infatuation with Cumberbatch means by speaking to critics, journalists, content creators and fellow fans, as well as professors of history, psychology, biology and sociology. She searches for the source of and science behind her celebrity worship in case studies from history and medicine. Carvan also offers her personal experience. She writes honestly about losing her sense of self in early motherhood, her formative childhood and adolescent experiences, and the embarrassment and guilt she associates with her newfound love. She then expands this research into feminist territory, looking at the way women’s interests and things deemed ‘feminine’ are often disdained by mainstream society. This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch is an easy, lighthearted read about serious subject matter: feminism, passion, relationships and creativity, and owning the strength of the passions felt in childhood and adolescence.

Fay Helfenbaum is a freelance writer and editor and was a bookseller for five years.

 

Category: Reviews