Fiction | Book Chatter

The Female Persuasion
By Meg Wolitzer
Riverhead Books, 9781594488405, April 3, 2018, 464pp.

The Short of It:

I love it when a book makes you feel things.

The Rest of It:

Greer Kadetsky is young and smart and vibrant but she’s resentful because of a mistake her parents made with her financial aid forms. Instead of Yale, she ends up at another university where her boyfriend is not. This separation isolates her and makes it difficult to fit in. One night, she meets a guy who takes advantage of her, and it occurs to her that men like him exist for the sole purpose of treating women like objects, taking what they believe to be rightfully theirs.

In protest, she attends a feminist rally while wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with this loser’s face. Faith Frank is in attendance and Greer is in awe. Faith is older, more refined and brilliant. Her passion while speaking stretches to the back of the room and Greer is changed forever. Completely smitten by Faith, Greer is ecstatic when she is offered an entry-level position with Faith’s magazine.

The Female Persuasion is mostly about Greer and her evolution as a woman fighting for women’s rights but there are some other characters who occupy space in this novel. For one, Greer’s boyfriend, who suffers a devastating loss that changes him in ways that Greer never imagined. Faith’s fight for funding and her endless pursuit of elevating women’s rights is tarnished by one, not-so-slight oversight. Greer’s closest friend Zee, is betrayed by Greer which is so ironic given the circumstances and what Greer does for a living.

This is a large, impressive read. I found myself re-reading passages because some of them beg to be re-read, digested and pondered. When I turned to that last page, I felt deeply satisfied with the story’s ending but also somewhat uneasy about the state of the world we live in. A little sick, really.

I think men will shy away from a book like this but there’s something in it for them too if they give it a chance.

Get a copy and read it.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

The Flight Attendant
By Chris Bohjalian
Doubleday Books, 9780385542418, March 2018, 368pp.

The Short of It:

An intoxicated flight attendant with an insatiable appetite for men, goes on a bender and wakes up next to a corpse.

The Rest of It:

Flight attendants visit some pretty exotic places but even with all that promise of adventure, things can be pretty routine while on the job. For Cassie, flirting with the passengers is pretty routine. Sneaking shots of vodka while working is also pretty routine and finding a guy to sleep with as soon as you land? Also pretty routine.

Cassie arranges to meet one of the passengers from her flight for dinner and drinks. Dubai has many luxurious bars and hotels but her only requirement is that the rest of her crew need not know any of it. It’s none of their business anyway, right? So when she wakes up next to Alex, a hedge fund manager whom she hardly knows, and sees the gaping wound to his neck, she panics because she cannot remember the evening and wonders if she was the one to murder him. Was she?

Cassandra Bowden’s alcoholic tendencies is what lands her in trouble but even sober, Cassie is not someone you feel sorry for because she’s somewhat calculated and makes really stupid mistakes over and over again. She is very hard to like and in the end, you won’t like her but that’s okay because the story still had me turning those pages.

However, the story has its weak moments. It’s a little repetitive. She gets drunk often and like The Girl on the Train, I tired of it quickly. I feel like the story could have taken many different directions which was good because I couldn’t tell how it would end but the ending was not realistic to me.

This is a book that I enjoyed purely for its page-turning lure. You’ll want to know the outcome and there are enough setbacks and wild moments to keep you guessing.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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