Other Women

by Lisa Alther

With two young sons, a failed marriage, a job as an emergency room nurse that leaves her feeling paralyzed and hopeless, and a relationship with a woman that has entered its final stages, thrity-five year-old Caroline Kelley is more than ready to change her life. Dr. Hannah Burke has seen almost everything in her long practice as a therapist -- and nothing Caroline can do or say can shock her. But as the therapeutic relationship between the two deepens and widens, Hannah finds old memories, desires, and despairs stirring, demanding recognition and resolution. What evolves and blossoms within these two women as they interact forms the basis for a novel that is candid, comic, erotic, ironic, unsparingly probing, and profoundly moving.

Genres: Fiction, Lesbian, LGBT, Psychology, Novels, Literature, Contemporary

352 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1982

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote my Master's thesis on this novel. I loved loved loved it.

Every woman, in any situation, should read it.

[Darlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Original Sin by Lisa Alther and having a hard time liking it in any way, I had a decision to make. You see I got both of these books through Kindle Unlimited which means they were free to borrow. I thought about returning this one, Other Women, and not reading it at all. Thank goodness I didn't. I loved this book!

If you have had a good experience with a counselor, dealing with problems of the past or current ones, this will feel familiar. I think everyone should have a good counselor once in a while to air the mental stuff that you might not want to weigh down your friends and family with. And here in Other Women there were plots and characters that felt so real that I was sorry the book ended. I think I might read it again, sometime.

Though this book ended quite well, all threads neatly sewn up, I still wish there was more. I want to see what happens next. We are left with ideas as to how life might continue, but I knew I would miss all these people as much as the real people in my life. I like when an author can do that. She created a reality that felt real.

Just saying that made me smile. Wasn't it because Original Sins felt so real that I hated it? I think I could relate more with the characters in Other Women much more deeply than I could with the characters in Original Sins. So maybe that is why the reviews on both books had such a variety of ranks. I guess it has to do with your own viewpoint of the world.

This is one book I will have to buy someday. I think many will love it as much as I did.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this ages ago. Many, many times. If I were to find my copy of it now and see all the underlined passages, all the notes I scribbled, would I cringe? Would I still agree? Would I shake my head fondly at my younger self's naiveté? I do not know, but I'd like to find out sometime. In the meantime, I want to re-read this book. I do know it's one that - for me at least - is still very much an old friend.

Hmm, that tells you very little about the book itself. I loved it. I hope that others who will love it, find it.

[Alma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the shrink. She's one of the most memorable & enjoyable characters I've ever encountered.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this many years ago. In fact, it is one of the handful of books I've read several times. It portrays depression and recovery well. I liked the characters and their interaction.

[Lynne · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was better in '84 when I first read it, this time I was mostly just frustrated by the main charater's unending angst.

[Irma · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first I gave this book a 4 for my level of enjoyment. But I decided that this was an important LGBTQ work for 1984.

[Rebekkila · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a nice surprise. When I started the book and realized it was about a woman going through therapy I figured I would get 50 pages in and then give it up. I ended up really looking forward to the therapy portions of the story. Odd, because I don't read self-help books and I am on the fence about therapists. The woman seeking therapy is a lesbian and I usually find that lesbians in books are there for the male readers entertainment.

Caroline has had several long-term relationships fizzle and decides to see a psychologist because she is having thoughts of suicide. Hannah has been through some tragedy in her own life and became a therapist after having a great wxperience with her psychologist. The back and forth between these women was tense, funny, and touching. I didn't find the therapist as over-bearing or causing more problems like they do in other books. I also didn't find the sex scenes to be gratuitous.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than 3 stars but less than 4 ideally. Seems really dated in terms of the LGBT content, and I thought she really overdid the main character's world weariness (we get it!) but much of the insight gained in the therapy relationship felt right. That growth was lovely to watch.

[The Bookish Gardener · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book second hand a while ago and stored it with my lesbian library.
I think I actually bought the book twice, and I think one was a signed edition, but the type was tiny, so I rehomed it. As I should.
The story was a great one. Full of promise. A psychologist and her patient and it looked into the lives of both. It provided fabulous insight into the working of therapy and I certainly learned a lot from it!
The story however seemed to drag. I understand the metaphor of it takes a lifetime to form these habits and they won't disappear overnight. But I found it very repetitive, especially toward the end.
The writing was lovely, the analogy of the weaving was wonderful. I liked the women in the story and their friends.
I found the children and former male partners half drawn - but that could simply be a matter of where the focus lay.
There were some lovely quotes in there in regards to motherhood and children growing older:
'Half the house empty and unused, the ghost limb of an amputee'
'They felt frantic during the chaos, lost when it was over'
'..boring old forms could sometimes carry you through the turmoil and deposit you on the far shores of contentment'
As a plant person, my favourite quote regarded plants in the home, 'there were so many plants in the house, it was like living in an oxygen tent'.
Beautiful descriptions. Literally, it was like living in a thinker's mind.
My only criticism was the ending.. *spoiler alert. It just dragged and dragged and dragged until it go to the point I lost any interest in whether she left her partner, hooked up with the shrink or walked off into the lake with stones in her gumboots.
I was disappointed about that. I wanted to care. I wanted to be invested. Maybe, instead, the therapy worked on me ;)

[Vagelis Frag · Rating 5 out of 5]

Καλογραμμένο βιβλίο με δυνατούς χαρακτήρες και σταθερή πλοκή που σου κρατάει το ενδιαφέρον αμείωτο. Πέρα από την απολαυστική γραφή της, η συγγραφέας, σε κάθε σελίδα, δίνει στον αναγνώστη και από ένα απόσταγμα ζωής που μπορεί να τον βοηθήσει να βελτιώσει την καθημερινότητα και την ψυχολογία του. Αυτό το βιβλίο μου έσωσε τη ζωή, το συνιστώ ανεπιφύλακτα.

[Kristina Moses · Rating 1 out of 5]

I decided to give up on the book because I wasn't enjoying it. The two main characters were very similar, especially in their mental states, despite one being the therapist. At times the author would switch between characters in one scene and it was hard to tell who was the one thinking.

[Lise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not Lisa Alther's best, but still worth reading.

[Anne Goodwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Caroline, a nurse in her mid-thirties, is conflicted about her sexuality: she prefers women but wonders if her preteen boys would be better off if she gets together with the male doctor who has taken a shine to her. Hannah is middle-aged and menopausal, happily married to a man, but with trauma in her past. The two meet when Caroline enrols for therapy with Hannah and, over the next few months, they both learn something about themselves.

This novel was recommended to me by someone who came across my series on fictional therapists. First published in 1984, it does seem dated forty years on (for example, Caroline’s shame about being a lesbian and Hannah’s chain-smoking through the therapy sessions), but there’s still much for the contemporary reader to enjoy. The story is easy to follow – fortunately so, given that I could only find a second hand copy, which turned out to be missing the first thirty pages – and peppered with humour that doesn’t diminish the seriousness of the main characters’ quandaries.

Unusually, it provides an insight into the therapeutic process, with particular emphasis on how the relationship follows the pattern stamped on the client’s psyche by parental figures (AKA transference) and how therapy can enable the client to make better choices in the future. But Hannah doesn’t seem to know about countertransference, which is when the therapist needs to interpret her own thoughts and feelings as communications from her client. Hannah’s musings on her own life read like distractions from the task at hand.

I wanted to applaud Hannah when she claimed to hold herself responsible for doing the best job she could but not responsible for her clients’ well-being. At last, I thought, a fictional therapist who understands boundaries. A few pages later, I discovered I was wrong.

Hannah invites her clients to phone her at home, although there is no reason for them to have her number. She isn’t ready and waiting when her clients arrive at her office at the appointed time. She burdens her clients with knowledge of her own tragedies and cuts a session short when she’s tired and her client has “nothing urgent” tell her. Indeed, she doesn’t seem to understand that the session begins the moment the client enters the room, failing to use silences and asking, “What do you want to talk about?” five minutes after the client has started talking.

Should I go on? I certainly got weary totting up her transgressions but, given that readers are rating this novel as a good example of therapy in action, I feel morally obliged to share a few more. It’s wrong to mention another client, especially when this person is your current client’s friend. It’s not good practice, but not too terrible to offer clients coffee, but it’s unforgivable to take them out to lunch. And, to confound the offence, to travel to the restaurant in the client’s car! But then Hannah hasn’t had a good role model in her own therapist who became a close friend.

Read this if you want to know about lesbian lives in 1980s America or how our early relationships with parents shape our lives. But if you want to know about how therapy works, look elsewhere.

[Antonio Papadourakis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ένα μυθιστόρημα αναλυτικής ψυχοθεραπείας. Η Κάρολιν είναι μία νοσηλεύτρια ομοφυλόφιλη, μητέρα δύο παιδιών που συζεί με την Νταϊάνα που είναι επίσης νοσηλεύτρια και μητέρα μίας κόρης.
Όταν νιώθει βαθιά μέσα της την κατάθλιψη, καταφεύγει στην ψυχοθεραπεύτρια Χάνα.
Μέσα στο ταξίδι της ψυχοθεραπείας γνωρίζουμε την ιστορία των δύο γυναικών και τους προβληματισμούς τους (κυρίως της Κάρολιν).
"Κι αν δεν μπορούσες να εντοπίσεις προκατασκευασμένες καταστροφές για να νιώσεις ένοχος, σκάρωνες δικές σου."
"Η Μαγκι υποστηρίζε ότι η ψυχοθεραπεία ήταν απλώς ένα τέχνασμα: ξυπνούσες το παιδί που ήταν κρυμμένο μέσα σε κάθε πελάτη, και έπειτα απογοήτευες τον πελάτη ως προς την έκταση των δυνάμεων σου."
"Η ψυχοθεραπεία ήταν θέατρο: προσπαθούσες να ξαναστήσεις σενάρια από το παρελθόν του ασθενούς, αλλά έτσι, ώστε τα αποτελέσματα να είναι διαφορετικά."
"Προσπαθούσε να κρατάει αυτή την εικόνα στο μυαλό της καθώς δούλευε με τους ασθενείς της, μία εικόνα τρυφερών καλών ανθρώπων που ήταν γεμάτοι σκατά από τα πράγματα με τα οποία τους είχαν φορτώσει οι άλλοι όταν ήταν πολύ μικροί για να διαμαρτυρηθούν."
"Σκέφτηκε τις πέντε της αισθήσεις. Όσο πιο πολύ τις έμπλεκε με κάποιο άλλο άτομο, τόσο πιο γρήγορο ο δεσμός κοινόταν δεσμά."
"Έτσι κι αλλιώς, δεν υπάρχουν άψογοι γονείς. Ήταν αδύνατο να υπάρξουν. Αν οι γονείς τους ήταν συνέχεια παρόντες, οι πελάτες ένιωθαν ασφυξία. Αν απουσίαζαν, ένιωθαν παραμελημένοι."
"Αυτό δεν έκαναν και οιπελάτες της; Προσπαθούσαν να αποζημιωθούν για οτιδήποτε τους έλλειψε όταν ήταν παιδιά. Κυνηγούσαν συντρόφους του ίδιου φύλου με το γονιό που ήταν λιγότερο διαθέσιμος. Οι πατεράδες δεν ήταν συνήθως ποτέ διαθέσιμοι. Ίσως γι' αυτό τόσες γυναίκες ήταν ετεροφυλόφιλες και τόσοι άντρες κρυπτο-μοφιλόφιλοι."
"Για να διαλέξεις έπρεπε πρώτα να ξέρεις τι θέλεις."
"Οι άνθρωποι είναι πλάσματα φτιαγμένα για να λύνουν προβλήματα, κι εκεί όπου δεν υπάρχουν προβλήματα, τα κατασκευάζουν για να έχουν κάτι να λύσουν."
"Για να βοηθήσεις κάποιον αληθινά, πρέπει πρώτα να απαλλαγείς από την ίδια  σου την επιθυμία να βοηθάς."

[Pamela Parson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved this book. I have LIVED this book in many ways. It was originally recommended to me by my therapist 35 years ago. There were two aspects of the story that resonated for me at the time (and I remember still.) First is the therapeutic relationship between Caroline, the main character and her Psychiatrist Hannah. I was beginning in therapy following a hospitalization. I was overwhelmed, frightened, anxious and wanted to know "how this will work." Alther's narrative was a comfort to me. In addition, I was a beginning to weave on my first small loom. Although I was not at the level of Caroline, the depiction of weaving, provided another entry into the story for me and further connection to main character. It was, for me, the first steps in understanding role art would play in my own journey to healing.

Women younger than me might find the book dated, but I believe it still has much to offer.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lesbian who goes to therapy reads a book about a lesbian who goes to therapy? Revolutionary.

I really liked the development of this book. If you read the reviews, a lot of people mention that the book starts to drag after a while. But therapy -- in my experience -- is not a one shot deal. It drags. You feel better and then you fall down again. It takes a long, long time to rewire your brain when you have spent a lifetime of thinking you are bad, worthless, etc. etc. ***spoiler alert *** that point is proven all the way to the very end, when Caroline worries about getting lunch with Hannah. She knows that if she goes to lunch, she can never go back to therapy with her because the relationship would have changed. She feels OK now, but what if she needs to go back? That struggle we see shows the nature of therapy (or therapy in my experience).

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had this book on my shelves for years. I remember having enjoyed Kinflicks which is the reason I purchased this one.
I enjoyed being transported back to the 80s. I find it humorous that's other readers found it "dated". In what way? I don't believe that we change that much over the years. The only things that were different was the technology.
I was surprised at how quickly Caroline changed but I enjoyed "watching" her change.
I was a bit put off by her spending an evening dyeing some yarn and then weaving a shawl with the dyed yarn. As a weaver and dyer myself I found her process very unrealistic. Poorly researched I guess. It doesn't detract from the novel, it's just an annoyance.

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for LGBTQ+ Book Club, and I think that was the reason why I kept expecting more of a torrid affair between Caroline and Hannah, instead of an intense psychological journey through their pasts and problems. Erm, it was interesting? Repetitive, which I felt could’ve been edited out, but I suppose the whole point was that processes repeat in the therapy cycle.

[Michelle]

I read this when I first went to Salem State College. I liked it because I used to devour everything about therapy. But I identified with the main character trying to be a good person and a crisis fixer. At 56, I am realizing there are people one can never fix. And sometimes we must do the loving act of letting go, in order to take care of ourselves.

[Melsreadinglist · Rating 3 out of 5]

:D not the best, but definitely entertaining!

Lesbian fiction: About a woman and her relationship with her therapist. A lot of the therapy sessions felt a bit odd to me. like the therapist smoking barefoot in the office haha. But maybe that was the 80s in America. still, a cool concept and in the end, it actually got to me!

[Dbvdb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this long ago. As I pass it on to a little library, I just thought I'd note it as read. It's a book I kept for some 20 years and I liked it quite a bit back then. I don't know how it would hold up today - if it was on Libby I'd read it again.

[Katleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prachtig boek over de psychologie van alle relaties (kind-ouder, liefdesaffaires, vriendschappen, minaars) die zich afspelen in een mensenleven. Heel herkenbaar,soms confronterend, mooie vergelijkingen en passende toespelingen. Je voelt je bijna zelf even zitten in de zetel bij de psycholoog. Als 'patient' maar ook als de psycholoog. Een boek dat je gelezen moet hebben. Verplichte literatuur voor jong en oud die eens met zichzelf worstelt, iedereen dus!

Een kleine opmerking: in het begin een beetje verwarrend omdat het verhaal zowel wordt verteld vanuit het oogpunt van Hanna en dan weer, zonder duidelijke overgang, vanuit de invalshoek van Caroline.

[Lester · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly interesting..and a good read.
Thankx Lisa Alther

[E Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made a great impression on me.

[Tanneke Zeeuw]

Have been re-reading since 1991. Still a good story!

[Ava Macpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really touched me - a really profound relationship and I’m sure I will read again when I feel like I might need to. Incredible vulnerable and relatable (at least for me - no judging please!)

[Mindy Myers]

I read this so long ago...in the '80's when it was first published. It is one that I read more than once. I quite enjoyed it, and if I can find it, I may give it another read.

[Rena Searles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book. The story was about the relationship of a young woman and her therapist. However, I was not pleased with the particular edition I read - a Signet edition - way too many misspelled words, incorrect grammar usage, typos and poor punctuation. I found these flaws very distracting from the enjoyment of the read. I did really appreciate the therapy process and could read this book again, if only for the insight into the human psyche. I related very much to this woman's particular issues and found many "aha" moments reading about how she dealt with hers.

[Marti · Rating 2 out of 5]

i read this book because daughter susan told me that the author is the grandmother of her son's friend zachary. i found it at s book sale.
i found it somewhat interesting, but a little confusing in the way that the author uses flashbacks so often. also, the main character is a lesbian, so that was a different lifestyle which was somewhat disturbing. it is certainly about relationships, and how therapy can help a person.