My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An exploration of the influence of men in a woman’s life, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing will have you reflecting on your own experiences with men, past and present. For young Jane, her grown up brother bringing home girlfriend is acutely interesting to her; she studies her brother’s choice in this girl as well as the way the young couple interacts with each other. From there Jane grows and we watch her relationship with her brother and father alter, she falls in love and we get to witness the way in which a deep an unexpected love changes her, and the contrast of her interactions with women provides and even clearer picture of the importance of men in a woman’s life.

All that, and it’s written beautifully. One of my favorite passages is short and powerful:
“Everywhere you go, you see women more beautiful than yourself.
You imagine him being attracted to them.
You’re drinking gasoline to stay warm.”

View all my reviews

Didn’t feel like that when I began which was two days ago…ah I thought, here’s another one of those books by a woman about women, finding themselves, triumphing against all odds, finding the end of the rainbow…a ‘feel-good’ book and not particularly my favourite genre. After a lifetime of reading, you’d think I know better than to trust my own judgement

I can’t say exactly when I found myself truly hooked onto this group of five very different women on their own separate, unique but oddly similar journeys Coz isn’t that what Life’s all about…aren’t we all on the same journey viewd from different perspectives, if you get what I’m saying? I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that, as a woman in her forties, their stories resonated with me. I understood a lot of background and context because I knew so well where they were coming from. Many times I had ‘been there and done that’. I don’t think this would have been as powerful or interesting a book for me personally if I had read it in my twenties, I just wouldn’t have been as interested or understanding of these women and their problems. I would have been…dismissive and boy would I have been a fool!

So, we have Eve, Doris, Annie, Midge and Gabriella and the stories of their lives, intertwined yet separate, each unique not because of the ‘story’ but because of the ‘woman’ it happens to. Munroe is fantastic when it comes to writing about the ‘ordinariness’ (if you will) of life in general. Her prose is easy; her simple, gentle style suits her subject. I love how she takes us on each woman’s journey, every agonizing misstep and every tiny triumph, in an oddly comforting way, peeling away the layers of self-doubt every woman goes through, until she comes to the right decision for herself. Along the way each one of the ‘Girls’ as I like to call them, discovers an inner strength and tests the bonds of friendship, often discovering support & understanding where she least expects to! So like in real Life! Each one during the course of a year, learns more about herself, her friends, trust, love and the hardest lesson of all in my opinion…the art of letting go. Munroe finds a way to make each journey believable, authentic and interesting, without lapsing into extreme sappiness.

In a book with five women, one is bound to have favourites and although Eve’s story is the dominant one, I liked Doris’s best which surprised me no end, not in the least because I have nothing in common with her life outwardly, but I understood her inner self best and was soon rooting for her to do the right thing! Strange that, coz I felt and still feel that I identify most with Annie…her feelings of isolation in childhood and the kind of person she is because of them, her need to always be strong (or perceived as certainly), her inability to reach out and ask for her help until her world’s collapsing around her are sadly not alien to me, and that’s what really got me thinking. I didn’t ike Annie much in the beginning and I can’t say I liked her in the end, but I understood her better and I was glad she understood that help comes to those that ask. It’s something I need to understand too and I’m getting better at it, but there’s always room for improvement! Maybe it’s a woman thing?!

Another thing I have to be thankful for is that this book finally got me writing again!! A long review that will go on my blog after ages of being abandoned as Life & routine overwhelmed me! Slowly I feel like I’m getting back some semblance control and maybe that’s why this book hit a chord. Munroe’s picked some great books for this Book Club of hers…ranging from Moby Dick to The Bible…and every chapter starts with a quote from the ‘book of the month’, that sets the tone for what’s to follow. I liked that and I loved the retreat at Doris’s cabin on the lake, and the tree house she built…a celebration of womanhood if ever there was one.

This is a wonderful read, easy and fulfilling in a quiet gentle way. It’s about women like you and me trying their best to get on with their lives, battling issues that most women in their forties will identify with consciously or not…troubled marriages, a loss of that ‘sense of self’ that defines who we are, loneliness, menopause, children leaving, and many more. And yet this ‘second adolescence’ as the Girls call it, is worth all the heartache, pain and struggle that come before. That doesn’t make it any easier to accept. Oh No! It’s a trial by fire at best, and I can testify to that coz I’m still still in the middle of mine…but dare I say…enjoying every terrifying, exciting bit of it?! Yeah…it’s all about choice and perspective and most of all about freedom…Freedom of the ‘self’, which so many women fear perhaps because we’ve been conditioned to equate it with betrayal & abandonment of our family & friends. Strong words I know but oh so true. One look at my Mom and I know I’m not wrong. But we’re getting better at taking care of ourselves…slowly, steadily and hopefully

Let me leave you with a passage from the book that made me smile and that to me defines the essence of this book…”She leaned back in her chair and stared at the moon.  It hung in the sky beside her, a silent but steady presence – inspiring, enlightening, timeless, changing. Sometimes fat, sometimes thin, sometimes glowing. Sometimes those blotches were right there on the surface for the world to see. Some nights the moon dominated the sky, other nights it slipped quietly through veils of clouds. Sometimes it was mysterious, other times it was exposed, scarred with the prints of men’s heavy boots. Tonight the moon seemed to be smiling at her, keeping her company with a glow that seemed to radiate from within. It filled her with its golden light. The moon had to be a woman, Doris decided. Raising her glass, she toasted her new friend and called out, “You Go, Girl!”

Read it!

P. S. Oh and just so we’re clear…as far as I know this book wasn’t nominated for a Booker or any other award but I could be mistaken about ‘any other’. I haven’t checked! Still, for me another nail in the coffin that is my Booker-reading Project

Do you think that there is such thing as women’s writing (as separate to “normal” writing/men’s writing)?

My character Sophie ponders this in My Candlelight Novel, and I don’t think she comes to a firm conclusion. Virginia Woolf said that you shouldn’t write as a woman or as a man: you should be woman-manly. But  I think that because writers bring their own experiences of the world into their work the writer’s gender (and class and sexuality and race) must creep in there and influence it.  There would be something wrong if it didn’t, surely. And women’s subject matter has often been seen as irrelevant (writing about war is more important that writing about a drawing room: Woolf again).

Do you actively call yourself a feminist? What does feminism mean to you and your writing?

Yes, I would call myself a feminist; I think it’s so ingrained in me that I don’t notice it. When you write, I don’t think you should try to insert values – they are implicitly there. Though maybe people could read my writing (and deconstruct it?) and conclude I’m not a feminist. That would be amusing. I would also call myself a socialist and even an anarchist, though all I do these days is sit in the country and write books. And grow vegetables (my ‘grassroots defiance against the capitalist diet’). I have a history, as you know, as a poster artist – there’s this playful aspect to the way I encounter and criticise the world. Basically, I’m unconventional. I go my own way, don’t care shit for the middle-class way of life.

As someone who would have experienced both the second and third (and subsequent?) waves, what do you think are the most important things feminism has achieved since the 1960s? What do you think still needs to be done?

( Discuss, in 60,000 words? – I’ll try to be brief) When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s I became aware of the limitations placed on women, as countless women in all ages and places must have. Who doesn’t notice that they are oppressed? But at that point in time, due to historical and economic circumstances it became possible for women to begin organising again. Firstly, in my teen years, I was a socialist, and also opposed to the war in Vietnam, something that ‘politicised’ a lot of people in those days. Then when I left school, and went to Sydney, I encountered the women in the so-called second wave.  Issues: equal pay, abortion, even the right to walk into a public bar! ‘Not the church, not the state, a woman should decide her fate’.  This basic right to control what happens to your own body. Access to contraception if you were unmarried. Domestic violence – there was an need for women’s shelters, and changes to the way girls were treated in the welfare system.  Most of us would have called ourselves socialists: class and opportunity was an issue. (But of course there were many kinds of women’s groups; the one I’m talking about is the Glebe Group, which was based near the university). On an early march I went on, men jeered at us and yelled that we were too ugly to get boyfriends and were all lesbians. (Oh, scare us with that!)   I always loved the look of the women I mixed with, so completely themselves, busy with things that mattered to them and confident and happy with their bodies; not bothered about dieting or making themselves acceptable for the male gaze. Many of us were very young, and some were in their 30s or 40s. There were much older women such as Bessie Guthrie who inspired and educated us, and who was central to so many campaigns.  But I haven’t answered your question. A lot has been achieved, but attitudes take more than a few generations to change. Keep fighting, sisters!

You’ve mentioned that your current manuscript will partly be about feminism and the women’s liberation movement in 1972. Why did you choose to feature this? Why do you think it is still relevant for readers in 2012?

40 years on: it’s part of history. This year is also the 40th anniversary of Dennis Altman’s book ‘Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation.’  It was a watershed year. The Whitlam Labor government was elected in December that year. Did you know that one of the first things they did was take the luxury tax off the contraceptive pill? A ‘luxury tax’ – can you imagine? Whatever its health drawbacks (and it was a lot safer than abortion or continual childbirth) ‘The Pill’ as it was called freed a lot of women. And Labor brought the troops home from Vietnam, and released imprisoned draft resisters. Fighting in dodgy foreign wars is still an issue.  But mainly (and here’s place again) I had an urge to write about those times. Memory and loss. I have a novelist’s eye – always have had. I wanted to capture the texture and atmosphere of the times – and they were strange days, indeed. Particularly the house that was the centre of the Glebe Women’s Liberation group, 67 Glebe Point Road (now it’s the Cafe Rolling Stones), where I lived not once, but twice. I was a funny, idealistic little girl from the country in a duffle coat, a nascent novelist, looking at it all and taking it all in. I didn’t know that one day I would write about it. But that’s what novelists do.

If anyone has any questions of their own, I’m sure Jo wouldn’t mind answering them here, so leave a comment!

I’m extremely lucky to know Joanne Hornimann – possibly the author whose novels lie closest to my heart and my experience. I’d read some of her novels before, but my main love for her writing came around while I was spending my gap year in Germany and was terribly lonely and homesick. I found her blog, chapters of her books online, and went into full-blown nostalgia. I sent her an email (probably filled with homesickness), she replied, and we have kept emailing since, and spent a couple of afternoons together in real-life company. I even have some tiny little succulents sitting on my windowsill from her garden. We also share a name, which is pretty cool.

A lot of Jo’s writing is set in and around Lismore and the Northern Rivers, which is why the spaces in her novels have a lot of significance for me. Living in a place that is neither big city nor outback, it often feels like regional areas are marginal in Australian writing, so when I can follow a character’s path when they traverse the streets and landscapes I grew up in, it’s something special. Her characters are real to me: no stereotypes, no judgement, just amazing, strong, gentle, diverse people. In particular I love Anna from About a Girl, who works in the bookshop I used to work in, whose life mirrors the way I saw myself through high school. There is something about Jo’s writing that makes me see myself everywhere. And she’s a master of words: her sentences are heavy with feeling and space and experience. They read like poetry, and I’ve often sat there and read passages aloud just to hear the words rolling off my tongue so beautifully. They very much capture the feeling and depth of the Northern Rivers, with its forests and beaches and waterways and people.

She’s also an awesome feminist, which permeates her novels. From single fatherhood (in a totally non-men’s-rights way) to young lesbian women whose lesbianism totally isn’t the issue, you can find pretty much anything, without judgement, without stereotypes. It’s something really hard to find in young adult fiction especially. Jo blogs as well: you can find her in the basement (Notes from Underground), the main house (Secret Scribbled) or pop up into the attic (Madwomen in the Attic), where she spends most of her writing time – at least, last time I asked!

Jo kindly let me interview her about her books and on her thoughts about feminism, and I’ve finally gotten around to posting the interview. I’ve split it into two parts, follow the link at the bottom of the page for the second part!

I find it very hard to sum up what your novels, as a whole, are about. In a few sentences, how would you describe your novels to someone new to your writing?

 I find it very hard to sum up what my novels, as a whole, are about! I only know that I write each one because it needs to be written. I think I write a lot about people who are ‘outsiders’ or troubled in some way. I’ve written about a 17 year old father looking after his baby on his own (Mahalia), about the mother of that baby and her struggle with depression (Little Wing), and about a young woman who is very certain about her sexuality, but not about her life as a whole (About A Girl). And then the two books about the O’Farrell sisters (Secret Scribbled Notebooks and My Candlelight Novel) are about two reading girls who view their lives through the prisms of the books they read. I write a lot about loss. Actually, most of my books are about loss. They’re quite melancholy really. People often remark about the way they’re written. I like sentences. I like the weight of them, and how they nudge up against each other and create a kind of music. Really I think I’m writing music. Or painting. I like texture and nuance.

Why do you call your novels young adult novels? Are there things you would change about your writing if your novels were marketed as (adult) literature?

I don’t call them young adult novels, but they are marketed that way. One was put out as an adult novel (A Charm of Powerful Trouble), but ended up being nominated for three young adult awards. I don’t think I’d write them differently if I wanted them to be adult books. But I came from the field of children’s literature, having written for younger readers, and I seem to fit into that niche. Lots of adults read my books. They have that cross-over quality. I like writing for the young, though; they are so very refreshing. I think I’m still about 18 to 24 in my head, though I’m 60.

Your novels often feature characters with different life stories and different perspectives to those commonly found in YA fiction (such as teenage fathers, lesbian relationships and people not from the city). Have you ever experienced controversy or criticism based on this?

Well, an early reviewer of Mahalia famously said that teenagers would find it as interesting as a pile of wet nappies: she received a lot of criticism from people for saying that. I think privately some people may have thought that ‘About A Girl’ was bit much – but then there’s the enormous gay readership for that book worldwide – it’s the Stonewall book of the month this month. I’m not sure what that means – Stonewall is a gay charity and they’re selling the book to raise money.

Place seems very central to your writing, in a way functioning as a character itself. Is this conscious? What significance does place have for you (personally and as a writer)?

I’m enormously influenced by place; I don’t know why.  Perhaps because I’m such an introvert, sitting around on my own, or absorbing the atmosphere of places I visit. I do think places affect people. And I’ve written a lot about Lismore, the town near where I’ve lived for over 20 years. I’m not sure I even like the place that much, but it has a strong personality, with the river, and the weedy banks and rainforest remnants, and the old timber houses set up high for the flood. It inspires its own kind of melancholy and reverie. It’s almost like the American South in parts. And then there are all the alternate people who’ve come to live there: they’ve influenced how the place feels as well.

Part Two here!

You know what’s great?  When a book lover, otherwise known as me, is able to interview book writers, otherwise known as authors.

I had the opportunity, thanks to Simon and Schuster, to read Sarah Pekkanen’s new book, These Girls, and to interview the her.  Before thinking I’m really important and that I’m being flown all over the country to interview people, which would mean that my goal of being the next big thing had been realized, the interview was virtual, via email.

The Book:

These Girls is a book for women about women It explores the complex relationships between and about them: friends, colleagues, mothers and daughters, and also their internal dialogue with themselves.  Its a story about three women:  Cate, Renee, and Abby, whose tales and struggles are both intertwined struggles completely separate at the same time.  The novel takes place in New York and Boston, and Cate and Renee work as Editors at a popular Glossy magazine.  Abby is a student and nanny, and the sister of the main love interest, Trey.

Cate: Recently promoted to Features editor at the magazine. Gorgeous, she seems like she’s got it together.  But, while she is smart and talented, she got a big elephant following her around.  And she doesn’t want anyone to know about it.

Renee: Stuck in a mid-level job for years, she covets the Beauty editor job that’s opened up.  However, there’s a glitch:  Renee is more rubenesque than model thin, and in her mind, that’s the one thing preventing her success.

Abby:  Loving children and working on a Master’s in Education, Abby takes a job as a nanny to a family in Boston.  Her past becomes her present as old memories start to come to the surface and Abby’s desire for a stable family causes havoc in her life.

These Girls is a beach read.  It’s not particularly intellectual, yet it prompts thought and introspection.

If you liked Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close, you’ll really like These Girls.

The Interview

1)      Of all of the characters in the book, Cate seems to be struggling the least with her identity as a person, and more with keeping her secret. How purposeful was that to make her ‘secret’ the less about self-worth than the other two? What a great question (editor’s note:  YAY. Sarah thinks I’m smart)– it wasn’t on purpose and I didn’t even realize it until you pointed it out! For Cate, I liked the idea that her secret was so surprising; she’s this smart, capable, driven woman who has achieved a lot of success in the world of glossy magazines. So the fact that her secret plays into the fact that she isn’t sure she really deserves the job was to me an interesting contrast. Perhaps because Cate has been identified as a rising star in the magazine world and gets a lot of outside reinforcement for that, she has fewer issues with her self-worth.

2)      You’ve really explored the theme of female friendship in the book, yet you have the characters living in the cut throat world of fashion magazines.  Why did you decide to put your characters in that life? Partly because I love learning  – about people, occupations, other cultures – and this way I get to do research for every book. I was curious about what life was really like at a big New York City magazine. So I befriended a staff writer at one, and early one morning, she snuck me into the magazine’s office before anyone else came in. I got a great behind-the-scenes tour and a lot of good gossip!

3)      Renee spirals so quickly downward.  Have you witnessed that happen to someone before? Yes, but the circumstances were slightly different. I know someone with an eating disorder, and it is horrible to witness . You feel so helpless when someone you care about is in the grip of such ferocious self-destruction.

4) This question was removed because it contained spoilers, and Sarah didn’t want me to ruin the story for anyone. If you’d like the story ruined, just leave me a comment, and I’ll send you the question and answer.

5)      Abby’s past started to affect her present when it came to the car and the toddler.  How did the affair with her boss fit in? Was she seeking love, a family, or a father figure? I think Abby really wanted to be part of a family. She sought it out in the wrong place – but eventually found it with her girlfriends. For everyone who has a destructive or unhealthy family, it’s so important to establish a new family that’s full of supportive friends.

6)      All of the characters had specific issues with their parents, and most particularly their mothers.  What types of connections were you hoping to make?  I think that women’s relationships with their mothers can be very complicated. There are so many threads running through them – love, annoyance, responsibility, affection – and there can be old hurts, too. As women get older, their relationships with their mothers often shift and they become the caretakers or the ones who give advice, and I really wanted to explore that theme. Of course, Abby has a terribly destructive mother, and unfortunately, those do exist in the real world, too.

7)      The usual question:  Are any of the characters autobiographical, or based on people that you know? I swear they’re not, although I can’t tell you how many times people have thought I’ve based a character on them! I always  say that my thoughts and experiences and observations of other people do make it onto my written pages – but they’re filtered through a kaleidoscope first – so they don’t resemble reality.

Sarah loves to talk to her readers, and especially likes social media (blogging and twitter have a starring role in the novel)

You can find her on Twitter : @sarahpekkanen

and on Facebook: Sarah Pekkanen

Sarah’s website: http://www.sarahpekkanen.com/

More from Simon & Schuster about the book: http://books.simonandschuster.ca/These-Girls/Sarah-Pekkanen/9781451612547

So what else was I to do other than buy a whole pile of books? (Bet you couldn’t see that one coming). And some truly wonderful ones I did find.

Some feminist books:

The Real Matilda by Miriam Dixson – A classic Australian feminist book about women and identity in Australia from 1788 to the present (well, 1976). I’m looking forward to reading this even though I’m not really that interested in Australia’s colonial history, and I am a little troubled about there being no mention of Aboriginal women in the contents. We’ll see where this one goes.

Backlash by Susan Faludi – This one I’ve read a lot about in the last few weeks and have been meaning to find at the library, so I was very happy when I found my own copy at the bookfest! The quote on the back says “What has made women unhappy in the last decade is not their equality – which they don’t have – but the rising pressure to halt, and even reverse, women’s quest for that equality.” I’m really interested in this book particularly because it’s more recent and deals with the post/counter-feminist backlash – the ones who say feminism has achieved its goal and should get over itself now.

Taking it Like a Woman by Ann Oakley – The Biography of British feminist Ann Oakley, as a mother, wife, academic and writer. I haven’t heard much about Ann Oakley, but I’m hoping this one lives up to it’s very cool blurb.

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf -  this is another one I’ve earmarked for borrowing from the library and was very happy to find! Beauty is one of those things that so many of us, including myself, still struggle with, be it on a daily basis or every now and then. I particularly like the subtitle: “How images of beauty are used against women.”

Some history books to please my history geek:

Uppity Women of Ancient Times by Vicki Leon – a very fun-looking book for feminist ancient history geeks like me! It talks about 200 awesome women from Ancient History – women I know about and a whole bunch more that I don’t.

Why Weren’t We Told? by Henry Reynolds – One of the seminal texts of the history wars that came to prominence under John Howard’s PM-ship, spurned on by Reynolds and his main opponent, Keith Windschuttle (whose views make me want to vomit). I studied bits of this book in year 12 for extension history; it questions the way that the Australian past is viewed and taught and idealised, ignoring the real effects of colonialism on Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

Is History Fiction? - by Ann Curthoys and John Docker – an amazing book looking at historiography through time with a post-modern slant, literally examining whether history is fiction or something more. I also read bits of this for extension history in year 12, it’s really great.

And four novels:

The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble – I have read some other books by Margaret Drabble and I love her writing style, her women characters (so understatedly strong and well-written) and the realism of her novels, so elegant and not at all melodramatic.

Leaning Towards Infinity by Sue Woolfe – I don’t know this author, but the blurb drew me in – it talks of mathematics and discoveries, and going against the grain, and relationships, in the good way. I’m looking forward to reading this one, for some reasons books about maths are always so very good.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood – I’ve been meaning to read this one for ages as well. I loved Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and this one seems to be a cross of a similar theme with something like Tony Morrison’s Beloved. Sounds amazing.

The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby – This one’s about Murasaki Shikibu, author of the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji. I haven’t read it, but a woman writer in 10th Century Japan? Can’t be anything but awesome.

Lots of reading to look forward to!

On a side note, I am off to Sydney tomorrow, for a week of Latin Summer School at the University of Sydney, and am coincidentally also going to the annual Sydney femblogger’s Coogee beach meetup, where I hope I’ll meet some of the brilliant bloggers I’ve been reading lately! I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am. As such the blog will probably be dormant for a week or so. Any feminist things I must do while in Sydney?

About two months ago, I borrowed Tessa Hadley’s Everything Will Be All Right from the Dalhousie Library. “Due back January 30, 2011,” the bespectacled librarian murmured as he stamped the book and slipped it back across the counter. Perhaps discovering that my privileges as faculty (not at Dal, mind you) afforded me four months to finish it is partly what kept me from forging ahead to the end in anything close to short order; I only turned the last page last night.

But in truth, it wasn’t just that. After the charismatic first chapter—well, technically it wasn’t the first chapter, but the “Beginning,” which, chronologically speaking, functioned more like part of an ending—the plot began to sink like a potato into a pot of tepid water. And truth be told, that water never really came to a full boil. (In fact, it often barely simmered.)

That’s not to say that this story—exploring three generations of conflict and closeness in a British family, with a focus on the women—didn’t offer up some lovely moments both in the character development and in the writing. Here, the second-generation daughter, Zoe, feels the thrills of her first girlhood friendship as she and her friend Fiona hide in a copse of trees from some marauding neighbourhood children:

The thudding of their feet and the blare of their yelling hung there for moments after they’d passed through; one boy shouted out the word “fuck” and something worse, and the terrible names used so flauntingly tore a vivid gash in the air. She and Fiona clung together, laughing into each other’s shoulders. Zoe was completely happy. Instead of imagining life’s possible intensity, she was inside it; it filled her. (157)

The passage, in retrospect, is a rather sad forerunner for Zoe’s adult life; she grows up to be an academic who is emotionally detached from almost everyone but her daughter. As an adult—a career-obsessed woman, is one inference—she does not live life’s intensity, but frets about her daughter’s disrespectful behavior while worrying she hasn’t loved her enough.

But before all this, in one of the most emotionally affecting sections of the book, young Zoe and her boyfriend Simon, both students at a prestigious university, become mired in the domestic burdens of parenthood (however, Zoe dropped out, while Simon continued his studies). Simon’s ambivalence about his daughter Pearl and his role as her father—and particularly, Zoe’s exaggerated perception of his ambivalence—contribute to the couple’s breakup. During the first couple of weeks of Pearl’s life, his ambivalence and anxiety are palpable:

Sometimes [Zoe] gave the baby to him to hold, no doubt in hope that the physical proximity would bring on the tenderness he was supposed to feel. It wasn’t very pretty, although he was amused by its fierce frowning look. He asked himself what bond he felt with this creature made from his own body, and in truth he felt nothing that he might not have felt for anybody else’s baby (some resentment, perhaps, at how its peremptory needs impinged upon him). If it moved him, it was to a blur of dismay at its feeble vulnerability contrasted with the more-than-hopefulness with which it attached itself to its life source, sucking and screaming and shitting, wanting everything. It made him fearful to think how much it didn’t know. (235)

By the end of the novel, Simon finds he has even more reason to worry about his daughter’s ignorance—she is a typical example of her generation, a TV-and cell-phone-addicted teenager with an appalling lack of concern for the world around her; he manages to do what her mother could not, encouraging her to quit her job at a record shop and study for her A levels.

There were other similar scenes that, although quiet and unassuming, snuck up on you to deliver an emotion-laden slap. And though there were moments when I sighed at the pace of plot and character development, the book’s soporific qualities did come in handy on more than one late night. But in fact, I shouldn’t be so harsh; I now feel a fondness for these characters—or at least a couple of them (there were far too many of them in the first few chapters, which explored the first generation of the family with a kind of distance that made me suspect the writer was either not entirely in love with them either, or else had struggled too much to imagine what their lives had been like). And this fondness (for Zoe and Simon, and Zoe’s mother Joyce, and even Zoe’s father, Ray) only grew: before I managed to finish Everything Will Be All Right, I was forced to make my way through another novel, one that (in my humble opinion) much less successfully explores similar themes. By contrast, EWBAR is a warm and fuzzy roller-coaster ride.

I might never have picked up A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert if it weren’t on my book club’s reading list. I’d never heard of it before, and one reason for this is that it’s stocked on “The Shelves at the Other Side” in my local independent bookstore. Read: the side I frequent is called (yes, you can imagine me putting on a snobby British accent if you wish) “Literature,” while The Other Side is called … to be honest, I don’t remember, as I just, um, don’t go there. (I’ll admit, I can be a bit of a snob about a few things, books being one of the top ten. Or even top three.)

Like its British sister novel, A Short History of Women also looks at the lives of several generations of women (five of them), and the differences in their lives as parents, women, and/or role models. From the first chapter, Walbert’s novel tries to set a far more political tone than Hadley’s: the first sentence announces “Mum starved herself for suffrage.” The cause was indeed worthy; but her choice to die for the vote also meant choosing to leave behind her two children who clearly never really forgave her for doing so, and who dealt with her death in different ways (the boy apparently became an alcoholic, the girl emigrated from England to the US, where she achieved academic success but eschewed close personal relationships).

Walbert’s book is marked by distinct sections narrated in first or third person by a “Dorothy.” Well, four of the five generations were named Dorothy, while one (the daughter of the suffragette) was named Evelyn. This shared name added to the confusion—which Dorothy are we reading about now? Who is she? When and where did she live? (sigh of aggravation.) For there is nothing that particularly distinguishes the narrative voices from each other, even the one in first person (Evelyn’s), which one might therefore expect to be more individualized than those narrated in third person (this observation succinctly made by someone in my book club). Luckily, some wise editor suggested that the book include a “lineage” page after the list of sections/chapters, which helps sort out the identity dilemma to some extent.

But it’s too bad that there wasn’t much evidence of a wise editor having any impact on the text itself, at least for the first few chapters. The quasi-stream-of-consciousness style writing seems contrived and pretentious, particularly in the mouth/pen of the 15-year-old Evelyn. For although Virginia Woolf’s first novel was published in 1915, the possibility that the 15-year-old narrator might have been inspired by Woolf’s innovative literary style—never mind even having read the book—seems like a conceit the author has consciously assumed as a clever nod to literary and women’s history. But it’s not carried out well, and an editor should have stepped in to offer guidance.

Some parts of the novel were apparently published as short stories (according to the same woman in my book club). These sections—I hesitate to call them chapters, they’re so fragmented and disjunctive—are self-contained and read more smoothly and easily. In other words, the clumsy writing doesn’t get in the way of plot/character development. But why wouldn’t someone have thought to get the rest of the book up to the same level of syntax and diction? Rush to get to press, perhaps?

Could the disjunction between the “chapters” be intentional, an attempt to represent the gaps between generations that even blood relationships cannot ultimately undo? A way of showing that no matter our close ties, we are still “islands,” isolated individuals who die alone, whether for a cause or not? Sadly, I suspect not; rather, the inconsistencies speak more to the enthusiasm for an idea that needed to go through that crucial second (or third, or fourth) stage that should follow writing: thoughtful rewriting.

There are, as with Hadley’s novel, a few “nice” moments—some characters are extremely sympathetic, and you can’t help but like them or wish things had gone differently for them. Even (for one gets the sense that we’re not to really like the men) the hapless Charles, husband to third-generation Dorothy, comes across as a poor, unwitting witness to the demise of his long marriage, confused that it would be happening at all never mind so late in the game (the couple is in their mid-seventies; presumably they were married for fifty years or more).

But overall, I had to wonder how A Short History of Women merited its status as one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2009. Was there not much to choose from last year? Or does she have the kind of New York publishing connections that many writers would kill—or starve themselves—to attain?