Thirty years on from The First Stone, Madison Griffiths is ready to blow the conversation wide open
The professor who whispers sweet nothings into his students’ ears, makes sweet nothings out of them.
Sweet Nothings is a gripping narrative non-fiction account of four women’s interwoven stories in the wake of having once been students who embarked on romantic relationships with their university professors.
Through the stories of Rose, Blaine, Cara and Elsie, Griffiths explores what these relationships tell us about power and interrogates how class and gender are expressed and exploited in our academic institutions.
By tackling sex, desire and its consequences in a university setting, it looks keenly at the gender imbalances that inform these affairs, and how thorny betrayal becomes when a woman is made to believe she is the ‘exception to the rule’ only to find out she is one of many.
Griffiths’ portrayal reveals, with searing candidness, the labyrinth of ego, ambition, and abuse that can begin in the classroom. It’s an unflinching critique of the hierarchies that distort relationships and can leave lasting scars.
PRAISE FOR SWEET NOTHINGS
‘A courageous interrogation of problematic sex delivered with poetic flourish.’ Chanel Contos, author of Consent Laid Bare
‘An examination of power and sex that prompts fury for what is done and grief for what is lost.’ Clementine Ford, author of I Don’t
‘With quiet fury and lyric force, Sweet Nothings lays bare the shrouded space where pedagogy and power entangle. Griffiths reminds us that women go to university to study – not to become an object of desire.’ Lucinda ‘Froomes’ Price, author of All I Ever Wanted Was to Be Hot
