Ina

Great book, I want to get a physical copy and run through the exercises more thoroughly 

I thought it would be a charming whimsical bedtime story sort of book, but Mary Poppins is haughty, vain, and surprisingly mean. She also gaslights the children routinely and eventually abandons them.
It's a pretty strange, disjointed little book.

It's a strange read. The parts of it I understand are when well, I enjoy the style of writing. Is vivid but not verbose, I could often see a picture in my mind's eye. I also enjoy a personal centred story with a small ensemble cast.
But there are moments where the writing is confusing and the spell is broken for me. Some of it is due to the Irish words, there are no footnotes or explanations. Some of it is just the minimal style of writing. I'm also a little bit confused by the ending, it feels a bit abrupt.
I enjoyed a lot of it but not all hence the slightly lower rating.

I liked the parts where Lizzie Stewart shared her experience and opinion. Where she described the stark contrast between women in movies walking down the street empowered and unaffected, in comparison to reality where any man might whisper something gruesome to you as you walk down the streets of London. So much so that I wore headphones non stop after a few years to guarantee my sanity.
I liked where she shares how capable and agile she felt, darting through the tourists and crowds of the tube. I can also relate to the sense of achievement and prowess I felt, turning an exhausting and mind numbing commute into a sort of mini game.
I like these moments in the comic because I learn something about myself and about her.

But so many of the musings in “Walking Distance” are about not taking a stance, not wanting to offend, not daring to speak out in case it sounds like she's speaking with certainty or out of turn or for other women. The apologetic, hesitant tone, in such a personal and naturally subjective form, felt flat and distant to me.

There's so much she could say, I feel she wanted to say, and I think it had the potential of being a powerful, cathartic experience. I got this comic because I lived and walked in so many of London's boroughs in my 20s and felt routinely unsafe. I wasn't sure if it was because I was an immigrant, if that caused more attention or if I was just sensitive and not used to it... I haven't heard many women talk about what that was like to take up public space today in London as a woman by herself and it would've been really powerful to see more of Lizzie's lived experience, personal anecdotes, of her bringing herself and her reality with confidence and conviction onto the page.

It was disappointing sadly