Book review - Every Other Thursday , Ellen Daniell

P. bought me this last week and I read it straight away – it’s brief, clear and absorbing, so perfect for readers without much free time. Partly a self-help manual and partly a kind of joint biography – oligobiography? I love me some jargon – it traces the thirty-year history of a career support group that meets fortnightly* in California’s Bay Area. Although originally mixed sex, the group evolved into Group-with-a-capital-G, a supportive, sociable set of seven strong, scientifically successful spider sandwich socks HELP I AM A PRISONER IN AN ALLITERATION FACTORY women, who have helped each other through and to many crises and triumphs.

The often daunting achievements of all Group members are listed at the back of the book, in fine print so as not to take up more pages than the actual chapters, and I was halfway through reading when I realised one of them wrote the yeast genetics handbook I used during my PhD. Nevertheless, some of the stories they tell will provoke reminiscent nods from us lesser mortals too: for example, you know that haunting fear that you are a useless fuckwit and one day you will be outed as such? I used to joke about living in fear of the Stupid Police (They’re after me! I can hear the siren!), but Group long ago named this fear the Frog Pig, ‘pig’ being their word for an irrational self-criticism, and ‘frog’ an in-joke born when one member misheard another worrying out loud that she was a fraud.

Daniell devotes the last section of the book to guidelines for setting up your own Group, describing the structure, conduct and rules of their meetings in some detail. I’m pleased to see that she presents these as suggestions rather than diktats, and acknowledges that all groups will need to develop their own ways of doing things. Some of the more cheesily earnest sharing-feelings stuff might make a cynical Brit like myself wince occasionally, but that's Californian self-help lit for ya, and the advice is commonsensical enough to avoid ever really grating the nerves. The peer-group approach also contrasts interestingly with the usual advice to find a mentor several steps up the hierarchy, although of course there’s nothing to stop you doing both at once.

I’m certainly intrigued by the idea of starting a group, but even if you think that sounds like hippie shit, you might still get a lot out of reading Every Other Thursday. It’s warm, heartening and occasionally stirring stuff, like a good cup of tea in book form. Thanks P., you’re a star.

*There now. Isn’t that so much better than the ugly, ambiguous ‘bimonthly’?