When I was a student, there was a craze among a small group of my friends for a bestselling self-help book called Women Who Love Too Much by an American therapist whose name was Robin Norwood. We were all feminists, though at this point (it was the late 80s) the f-word was painfully unfashionable, and on our shelves was lots of seriously good – if then already slightly retro – theoretical stuff: Kate Millett, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar.
Also, of course, Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, in its millionth (or so) edition. But somewhat to our embarrassment, it was Norwood’s book whose spine was the most cracked. What can I say? At 19, and away from home for the first time, all we really wanted to know was how to stop wasting so much of our time and energy on horrible men.
