A pointed but hazy bildungsroman with little in the way of plot.
A woman seeks freedom from an oppressive system in Steinberg’s novel.
From a young age, Arianna observes the world around her in Texas, trying to make sense of the stories her sister, Lori, tells; her father’s and grandfather’s drinking; and the condescending way that her teachers talk to her. She knows that their family is poor but that “their poverty was special. Them being poor was in the moonlight with her mother singing and her grandfather playing the violin.” Young Arianna also observes other power dynamics around her, particularly between men and women (rendered as mxnand womxn). When she reaches adulthood, she manages to escape to college, but she still deals with the complexities of sex, gender, money, and religion. As she moves on to grad school and eventually marriage and children of her own, can Arianna find freedom of expression, or will she be anchored forever to the same dynamics that informed her early years? Steinberg’s prose is effectively layered and fluid, shifting between Arianna’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts and the editorializing voice of a third-person narrator. In both registers, however, the dense text is often unclear in its meaning. At one point, for example, Arianna (or the narrator) discusses an English paper on sex and religion: “It was the kind of topic that everyone wished they had and no one wanted to talk about; like the way a naked womxn felt in a movie walking towards a bed, knowing everyone in the world was going to have their own opinion of exactly what she was doing there.” Why exactly is the topic so desired yet forbidden, and how is it related to the imagined thoughts of a nude actor? Such unexplained assertions are a recurring feature of the text. The book sets itself up as a tale of critique and rebellion, but with its nebulous narrative and a cipher for a protagonist, it befuddles much more than it enlightens.
A pointed but hazy bildungsroman with little in the way of plot.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2021
ISBN: 979-8455358999
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A touching portrait of courage and friendship.
A lifetime of friendship endures many upheavals.
Ellie and Homa, two young girls growing up in Tehran, meet at school in the early 1950s. Though their families are very different, they become close friends. After the death of Ellie’s father, she and her difficult mother must adapt to their reduced circumstances. Homa’s more warm and loving family lives a more financially constrained life, and her father, a communist, is politically active—to his own detriment and that of his family’s welfare. When Ellie’s mother remarries and she and Ellie relocate to a more exclusive part of the city, the girls become separated. They reunite years later when Homa is admitted to Ellie’s elite high school. Now a political firebrand with aspirations to become a judge and improve the rights of women in her factionalized homeland, Homa works toward scholastic success and begins practicing political activism. Ellie follows a course, plotted originally by her mother, toward marriage. The tortuous path of the girls’ adult friendship over the following decades is played out against regime change, political persecution, and devastating loss. Ellie’s well-intentioned but naïve approach stands in stark contrast to Homa’s commitment to human rights, particularly for women, and her willingness to risk personal safety to secure those rights. As narrated by Ellie, the girls’ story incorporates frequent references to Iranian food, customs, and beliefs common in the years of tumult and reforms accompanying the Iranian Revolution. Themes of jealousy—even in close friendships—and the role of the shir zan, the courageous “lion women” of Iran who effect change, recur through the narrative. The heartaches associated with emigration are explored along with issues of personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good (no matter how remote it may seem).
A touching portrait of courage and friendship.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781668036587
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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