Sense & sensibility

Susan Sontag’s essays are fresh and unflinching, despite their age

- ELEANOR DE JONG

ON WOMEN, by Susan Sontag (Hamish Hamilton, $40 hb)
In the past 10 years, a plethora of modern feminist writing has hit the booksellers' shelves, some of it very good, much of it very shallow. All of it is welcome.

The best examples come from writers such as Rebecca Solnit and Ariel Levy, while weaker works include essay collections-slash-memoirs by Girls creator Lena Dunham and Pandora Sykes' How Do We Know We're Doing It Right?

These later works can be enjoyable reads, but they lack the backbone and intellectual rigour to truly question the status quo.

And so Susan Sontag's On Women is welcome. A reissue of collected feminist essays from the 1970s, edited by Sontag's son, David Rieff, the book explores such timeless themes as the expectations for women's beauty, the double standard of gendered ageing, and the labour of motherhood.