Debriefing Darly: Coming of Age at Any Age

by Amy Virginia Evans

Young and confident Darly Lane's life is rocked by the Marvelous Mavens---five vibrant older women in her Boston University PhD study. Darly's hypothesis that the Women's Liberation Movement fixed everything is upended by the Mavens, who reveal a deeper female truth. They hold nothing back as they school Darly during their wine-fueled dinner meetings. It's cathartic for the Mavens, but their candor threatens to crush Darly.

If being a woman is such a minefield, why are the Mavens having so much fun?

Genres: Fiction

338 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 4, 2024

About the author

Amy Virginia Evans lives in New England. Her eclectic career includes work as a political campaign consultant, United Way study author, child abuse investigation facility creator, corporate human resource generalist, book illustrator, Justice of the Peace, blogger, commercial actress, model, and voice talent. She has a B.A. in English from Boston University.

Reviews

[TheLitPirate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unexpected and completely lovely. The Mavens sound like a gang I want to be a part of.
🏴‍☠️

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a book club selection by a member of my local book club. It was so much more than I thought it would be, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was drawn in by the five women in Darly's study group, and I loved the cohesive bond they formed and support they provided each other. Women rock! The topic of the Women's Liberation Movement engages me, and this book covered so many valid points.The topic of self-actualization inspired me in my own life to set a plan to accomplish two of my goals. What a wonderful thing to get from any book, especially one not written to be a self-help book. I can't wait to read more from Amy Virginia Evans.

[Lif Strand · Rating 5 out of 5]

The back cover of Amy Virginia Evans’ novel, Debriefing Darly: Coming of Age at Any Age, says this: “When you fact check the facts of life…”. Talk about true words!

First let me say I loved this book, and I loved it for so many reasons. Ironically, I generally don’t much enjoy multiple characters, but in this book it worked, partly because each character was distinctive, and partly because of the unique format of the novel. The main character, Darly Lane, is doing a PhD study at Boston University. Debriefing Darly is about the study. The chapters each refer to the content of the study but they also include Darly’s personal story and those of the five study subjects, the Marvelous Mavens. This was a very cool way to present some serious information about the lives of women in general and impact of the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s on women of a certain age today.

As a woman of that certain age, I identified strongly with a number of the issues each of the Mavens had experienced over fifty year’s time. I also thought about Darly’s thesis questions, and fact checked the Maven’s responses against my own. It all rang true. Then I decided to check out Ms. Evans’ history, in case she was presenting her own PhD study in fictionalized form. What I discovered made me laugh.

Ms. Evans graduated from Boston University in 1980 (not in the same field as Darly!) and then took courses at University of California, Berkeley. I started college at BU and then transferred to and graduated from Berkeley. Ms. Evans and I were enough years apart that we would not have crossed paths, but I recognized all the locations of Darly’s Boston and that was fun, too.

I feel that every novel has the potential to teach the truths of life, and I strive to bring truths to my own writing. I’m going to read Amy Evans’ other books, and I can’t wait to she what she has to say about other facts of life.

A highly recommended read for everyone of any age, sex, and gender.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely give a book five stars, but this one I did. Perhaps because it surprised me. It surprised me because the book jacket said it was about five older women who would be contemplating the effects of the Women's Movement on their lives. My expectations were not high. I started reading it, and it was obviously a delightful and easy read. I imagined reading it and giving it three stars for its entertainment value. By the end, however, I realized this book was deeper than what I was giving it credit for. It fleshed out five lives in a way that was neither conflated with exaggeration about what the Women's Movement had done for the characters nor patronizing for choices that some might see as discarding opportunities. Amy Virginia Evans has seen women of this age as the courageous human beings they are and has invited her women readers to celebrate themselves, their choices, their achievements and their willingness to mentor the next generation.

[Judy Blachek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be a charming and thought-provoking read. Darly is a graduate student who is writing her thesis on how the women's movement changed women's lives. She finds five older women to interview and finds that her plan for her thesis may not be as accurate as she thought.

Yyou could easily be confused by the five women she interviews, but the author kindly lets you know when a chapter is in that character's voice.

Darly sets up meetings with all five women and the discussion does not often go the way she expects. Along the way, the five women start to realize what makes them feel happy and fulfilled and many lives are changed because of this.

This is a smart book that women who were young during the 1970s would find quite satisfying.

[Nancy M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable but the premise was a bit flimsy. Darly seemed very unprepared academically, having to do very basic reading in her field, while already doing research. The decisions the other women in the group made seemed compressed in time, and the importance of the friendships they made seem outsized for the time they existed. The ending of the book was disappointing, and followed the pattern of minimizing the men in the story.

This would have been merely a 3 star rated book except for the writing itself which flowed easily and the familiarity of the Boston setting. Not memorable.