Sisterhood

Graffiti Girls by Elissa Soave is a powerful contemporary novel that consumed me from the start.

Graffiti Girls is set in Scotland and surrounds four female friends in their forties. The book is about sisterhood and supporting each other. The four have felt marginalised all their life but now they are in their forties, they seem invisible too. “The feeling of being useless as a shadow, and as insubstantial as one too, had crept up on her.” Together they highlight some of the wrongs in society.

Society has always been a patriarchal one. Even as children, they were exploited by a male teacher, feeling that they had to do as he said without question. “The way old Mouldy put it, it felt like we had no choice.”

Graffiti Girls is about having a voice and using it. “It is about striking back, making our voices heard.” They want to break out of society’s traditions and be free to be themselves. “We’re worth something, our lives matter.”

Each of the women is unique and with a very different home set up. What unites them is the way that they are all treated by the males they come across. “We’re here, we’re over forty but we’re still here. We won’t be ignored; we won’t be airbrushed out of the picture.” Graffiti Girls is about taking control – and as they do this, their lives are enriched. “It’s taken Graffiti Girls to wake me up and make me realise I need more from life.” The friends empower each other, and the wider female population too.

There are some very moving scenes where the women individually touch the lives of others. They see the lost and the hurting. They do not walk on without stopping and touching lives whatever the personal cost to them.

Graffiti Girls is about friendships and family; and healing any rifts that appear.

All the characters were well drawn, realistic and extremely likable.

Elissa Soave is a new author to me. She writes with sensitivity, and with humour too. I absolutely loved Graffiti Girls. It was an extremely relatable book.

JULIA WILSON