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Some Comments and excerpts from reviews of
How to Conceive of a Girl
(Vintage/Random House, 1994):
‘If you immerse yourself and let the fragments accumulate, you get a new perspective on the messy, lateral workings of the human heart and mind. It’s exhilarating.’ – Jenny Pausacker, The Age
‘Witty, emotionally powerful, and very crisp.’ — Louise Adler, Arts Today, ABC Radio
‘This is something really special… written with an elegance and eloquence that is inspiring.’
– City Weekly
‘.. a collection of writing that defies easy definition, combining short story, essay, montage and reverie, sometimes on the same page. Spencer moves from dreamlike fantasy to acute analysis of sexual politics, mixing skewer-sharp character detail with luridly funny evocations of the 70s, juxtaposing pop-culture savvy with searching evocations of desire. Rewarding and engrossing reading.’ — Phillipa Hawker, Marie Claire
‘…The Addams Family, Karl Marx, excerpts from New Idea, Luce Irigaray’s poetry, Rod Stewart’s lyrics and the theories of Roland Barthes are all vitamised together… And Spencer is not a writer to cast you a linear life-line. But as she says of writing about the 70s: “Maybe realism is inadequate for exploring the confused contradictory fragmented mess that it was”. So go with the flow when reading this. One connection invariably leads to another and, despite the jagged edges, the prose glides.’ — The Herald Sun
‘Spencer’s book will appeal to anyone with an interest in ways of breaking out of sequential narrative. Her montage or collage assembly of incidents and reflections, rearrangements of time and place, attract me enormously… the playfulness of the methods she employs and the self-questioning throughout… reflect an intellectual toughness that deserves to be encouraged and promoted.’ — The Weekend Australian
‘I enjoyed reading Spencer’s stories, at times they made me laugh, they constantly made me reflect, once or twice they made me cry.… a talented and inspiring writer.’– Australian Women’s Book Review
‘..Spencer’s voice is contemporary, local… By revealing that there’s nothing “natural” about being/becoming/conceiving of a girl, by bringing this into language, literature and therefore culture, Spencer makes it more possible to rethink/renegotiate the social contract… [There are] dangers involved in broadening gender definitions, in boundary crossing, in abseiling and hang-glidings from secure subject positions; that is, in bringing the unknown, the unarticulated, the disavowed into cultural consciousness. It’s a serious business …and I’m always grateful and amazed, renewed in my attempts to continue doing this when I read work like How to Conceive of a Girl. You could say that it en/genders courage.’ — Kathleen Mary Fallon, Australian Book Review
‘Beth Spencer flings herself into textual free-fall in this strange, delightful book… the collection simply buzzes… More please.’ — The Good Weekend
 