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A Short History of Women
The novel opens in England in 1915, at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragist and one of the first women to integrate Cambridge University. Her decision to starve herself for the cause informs and echoes in the later, overlapping narratives of her descendants. Among them are her daughter Evie, who becomes a professor of chemistry at Barnard College in the middle of the century and never marries, and her granddaughter Dorothy Townsend Barrett, who focuses her grief over the loss of her son by repeatedly defying the ban on photographing the bodies of dead soldiers returned to Dover Air Force base from Iraq. The contemporary chapters chronicle Dorothy Barrett's girls, both young professionals embarrassed by their mother's activism and baffled when she leaves their father after fifty years of marriage.
Walbert deftly explores the ways in which successive generations of women have attempted to articulate what the nineteenth century called the woman question. Her novel is a moving reflection on the tides of history, and how the lives of our great-grandmothers resonate in our own.
Walbert deftly explores the ways in which successive generations of women have attempted to articulate what the nineteenth century called the woman question. Her novel is a moving reflection on the tides of history, and how the lives of our great-grandmothers resonate in our own.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 31, 2009
228 people are currently reading
3687 people want to read
About the author
Kate Walbert
11 books204 followersKate Walbert was born in New York City and raised in Georgia, Texas, Japan and Pennsylvania, among other places.
She is the author of A Short History of Women, chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2009 and a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize; Our Kind, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2004; The Gardens of Kyoto, winner of the 2002 Connecticut Book Award in Fiction in 2002; and Where She Went, a collection of linked stories and New York Times notable book.
She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fiction fellowship, a Connecticut Commission on the Arts fiction fellowship, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library.
Her short fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize stories.
From 1990 to 2005, she lectured in fiction writing at Yale University. She currently lives in New York City with her family.
She is the author of A Short History of Women, chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2009 and a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize; Our Kind, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2004; The Gardens of Kyoto, winner of the 2002 Connecticut Book Award in Fiction in 2002; and Where She Went, a collection of linked stories and New York Times notable book.
She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fiction fellowship, a Connecticut Commission on the Arts fiction fellowship, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library.
Her short fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize stories.
From 1990 to 2005, she lectured in fiction writing at Yale University. She currently lives in New York City with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 612 reviews
September 26, 2009
Motivated to read A Short History of Women by a glowing review in the New York Times, I wanted to love it. What a treasure it would be to have a book that provided through brilliant character portrayal a bridge from Virginia Woolf's London to the subsequent waves of feminist thought and experience in the U.S.A.
Reading, I felt unsatisfied, and by the end I wondered at the reviewer's taste. The book's clever structure dominates rather than supports the story. The writer's presence thus becomes unwelcomely apparent. For the most part, the reader's access to the characters depends on brief and therefore somehow shallow episodes. Real participation has no time to develop. Occurrences are sprinkled throughout the book that seem to be there merely for shock value. For instance, we don't know enough about the victim of attack, Helen, to make the violence integral to the story. Seemingly important characters, like Stephen Pope, are mere cutouts, shells. This goes for all the men, save Charles.
My experience reading this book reveals me not to be a fan of the vignette style. I do not like for threads to begin only to be dropped before any development takes place. In this book, I did not find the connections between the vignettes compelling. It seems to me that A Short History of Women would like to be about intimacy, but it ends up highlighting alienation. And yet, even the alienation rings hollow, because the necessary contrast of a background of meaning is missing.
December 5, 2009
Kate Walbert's 'A Short History of Women: A Novel' is proof that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. My journey through this short novel (topping out at under 250 pages) was a slow decline into the depths of hell.
The premise is simple - this is the story of five generations of women struggling to find out who they are and what their places are in the world. The story begins with the oldest, Dorothy Trevor Townsend, who starves herself to death for women's suffrage in 1914, leaving behind two children: Evelyn Charlotte Townsend and Thomas Francis Townsend. Second generation Evelyn does not marry or have children, so the third generation woman is Thomas' daughter, Dorothy Townsend Barrett. I understand the author's intentions in keeping Evelyn a single woman, teaching chemistry to women at Barnard, but I didn't like that the fact that the five generations of women were only possible because of the first Dorothy's son marrying and having a daughter. Dorothy Townsend Barrett goes on to have three children: James Francis Barrett (whose death in his late 40's is a constant source of pain for the family and eventually tears it apart), Caroline Townsend Barrett Deel and Elizabeth 'Liz' Anne Barrett. The fifth generation woman in the story is Caroline's college age daughter Dorothy 'Dora' Louise Barrett-Deel.
Is that enough to make your head spin? There are three women named Dorothy in five generations, which makes it incredibly hard to keep track of which one is which. Speaking from personal experience as the fourth Grace in as many generations, it is incredibly confusing and causes a lot of problems with insurance companies, doctors' offices, pharmacies, credit reporting agencies, boards of elections, etc. because there is no way to distinguish between mother and daughter with the same name as there is with fathers and sons.
The three Dorothy's were a big strike against the book for that very reason. Not only is it confusing in the real world, it's confusing when reading about three characters with the same first name especially when there is nothing remarkable or interesting about any of them because they all filled some stereotype. It was hard to keep track of which one was which. If it wasn't for the "Lineage" page at the beginning of the book with the family tree, I would have been completely lost.
My final complaint with the book is that it was shallow and fell flat. This had all the elements to be a modern classic: five generations of women - the first fighting for women's suffrage and the last reaping the benefits of the fight; five women growing up in incredibly different social and cultural times and learning to live in the new times and within their families; women's relationships with other women of different generations, oh the list could just go on and on. Instead, Kate Walbert decided to do a half assed job of telling the story, letting her incredibly interesting and compelling idea fall apart into this 237 page book of episodes from the five women's lives that are devoid of cultural relevance, raw emotion, or originality and make little sense when strung together.
Maybe this was the best Walbert could do. Maybe she didn't see the need to dig deeper. Or maybe she didn't think she had to because she underestimated the women who would read her book. Honestly, I expected more from an author selected for the New York State Writers' Institute line up this year. Oh well... besides, I should have known better for picking up a book about five generations of women that couldn't even hit 250 pages.
The premise is simple - this is the story of five generations of women struggling to find out who they are and what their places are in the world. The story begins with the oldest, Dorothy Trevor Townsend, who starves herself to death for women's suffrage in 1914, leaving behind two children: Evelyn Charlotte Townsend and Thomas Francis Townsend. Second generation Evelyn does not marry or have children, so the third generation woman is Thomas' daughter, Dorothy Townsend Barrett. I understand the author's intentions in keeping Evelyn a single woman, teaching chemistry to women at Barnard, but I didn't like that the fact that the five generations of women were only possible because of the first Dorothy's son marrying and having a daughter. Dorothy Townsend Barrett goes on to have three children: James Francis Barrett (whose death in his late 40's is a constant source of pain for the family and eventually tears it apart), Caroline Townsend Barrett Deel and Elizabeth 'Liz' Anne Barrett. The fifth generation woman in the story is Caroline's college age daughter Dorothy 'Dora' Louise Barrett-Deel.
Is that enough to make your head spin? There are three women named Dorothy in five generations, which makes it incredibly hard to keep track of which one is which. Speaking from personal experience as the fourth Grace in as many generations, it is incredibly confusing and causes a lot of problems with insurance companies, doctors' offices, pharmacies, credit reporting agencies, boards of elections, etc. because there is no way to distinguish between mother and daughter with the same name as there is with fathers and sons.
The three Dorothy's were a big strike against the book for that very reason. Not only is it confusing in the real world, it's confusing when reading about three characters with the same first name especially when there is nothing remarkable or interesting about any of them because they all filled some stereotype. It was hard to keep track of which one was which. If it wasn't for the "Lineage" page at the beginning of the book with the family tree, I would have been completely lost.
My final complaint with the book is that it was shallow and fell flat. This had all the elements to be a modern classic: five generations of women - the first fighting for women's suffrage and the last reaping the benefits of the fight; five women growing up in incredibly different social and cultural times and learning to live in the new times and within their families; women's relationships with other women of different generations, oh the list could just go on and on. Instead, Kate Walbert decided to do a half assed job of telling the story, letting her incredibly interesting and compelling idea fall apart into this 237 page book of episodes from the five women's lives that are devoid of cultural relevance, raw emotion, or originality and make little sense when strung together.
Maybe this was the best Walbert could do. Maybe she didn't see the need to dig deeper. Or maybe she didn't think she had to because she underestimated the women who would read her book. Honestly, I expected more from an author selected for the New York State Writers' Institute line up this year. Oh well... besides, I should have known better for picking up a book about five generations of women that couldn't even hit 250 pages.
February 14, 2011
I wanted to like it. I really, really did. But every time I found myself getting some momentum and actually caring about what happened to one of these women, her chapter ended! Major disappointment. I'd read a few pages and then realize I had NO idea what I'd just read, and not much motivation to go back and recap. The biggest problem was that, because I was never fully invested in the characters, I kept having to flip back to the "Lineage" page to keep track of which Dorothy was which. Not a good sign.
There didn't seem to be much of a connecting thread, or a rhyme or reason to the organization of the chapters. I kept waiting to see the big picture and it just never came.
I'm sure Walbert had a point, but I guess I just missed it. Instead, the novel felt like a "hollow bone." Har har har.
There didn't seem to be much of a connecting thread, or a rhyme or reason to the organization of the chapters. I kept waiting to see the big picture and it just never came.
I'm sure Walbert had a point, but I guess I just missed it. Instead, the novel felt like a "hollow bone." Har har har.
February 15, 2011
This is a seriously horrible book, just utterly boring and distracting. The pretentious central conceit, providing "a short history of women" through the fragmented stories of four generations of women all descended from the same woman, fails miserably in connecting with the audience in any significant or moving way. The narration jumps through a disjointed chronology spanning more than one hundred years and through the points of view of multiple characters with extremely similar names. The disorienting jumps in setting and perspective keep the reader from feeling any true empathy for any of these characters, least of which the matriarch who dies from her own hunger strike in support of women's suffrage. The loose ends that Walbert creates in the first chapters of the book may very well have been tied up by the end, but I was so lost and uninterested that I surely didn't notice. What I did notice however was her utterly contrived attempts to show the trials and tribulations of women over the past century, including a 1970s group therapy party in which women sit around and complain about the difficulties of their lives, most of them ignoring the irony of ordering around a hired female servant for the event.
Clearly, I want the week back that I spent reading this book.
Clearly, I want the week back that I spent reading this book.
December 31, 2009
This book was handed me by my wife who had read a review in the NY Times. While it was well and very lyrically written, I could not really come to understand why the author had written it and what she had hoped we would gain through its reading. So I asked my wife and she said that she was not surprised I did not understand - I could not, she proposed, because I was not a woman and could not identify with a woman's life living in a male dominated society. Perhaps that is the case. I try to think of myself as sensitive to such issues but I only came away from this novel with the understanding that virtually everyone in the book, males included, seemed flat and miserable. Your mileage may vary. However, I am not inclined to read another of this author's books which has arrived for my wife at the library. Too little time and too many books to be read.
March 31, 2011
This was hugely underwhelming; a nice writing style, but an utterly forgettable narrative.
"A Short History of..." is a trend in titles over the last few years, perhaps borrowing from the popularity of Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, a book that pays back its promise of a layman's ruminations of pop science unconcerned with order or specialization, just a little (not to say "short," that's Bryson's misnomer) book of raw wonder. But there is no wonder here.
Conversely, it is short, but it is not a history of women, nor even a history of one family of women, but rather the narrowing, dissipated memory of a woman through several generations, where the fact is remembered, but anything that made it relevant is forgotten or completely unexplored.
Alright, to justify that I'm going to have to reveal a spoiler, but it's something you learn in the first few chapters anyway, and, as the author explores it less than I will, I don't think it's going to spoil anything. In 1914 a woman, the mother of two young children and estranged from her husband, starves herself to death, apparently for the "woman's cause." She is defined as a Suffragette, but the evidence is meager. This, at first, is compelling. A reader will ask, why is she doing this? How does it benefit the cause? Who is paying attention? What will her children make of this? Unfortunately, even though we get some pov from her daughter, and also from her son's daughter, the only answer we get is basically, "it sucked that my mom died when I was young. I had to go to the US/to live with estranged relatives and live out a pretty unremarkable life that I will now describe in some detail..."
By the time we reach the present generation there is literally nothing left to say, so we have to read about modern-day New York City playdates and strung-out moms who drink too much wine. If there was ever any relevance to having a suffragette great-grandmother, it is totally ignored. If our understanding of a woman's role through generations is supposed to be expanded, I missed the thesis, unless I'm supposed to be convinced that a woman's role is pretty dull and/or ill-defined. If that's the case, I didn't need this novel to tell me so, and, if you're female, you didn't need this novel, either. Your evocation of a woman's role is better defined by your own biography than anything you'll find here. Is Walbert telling us how forgettable our own genealogical history is? If so, she's not telling us that it matters; you're still going to be a fucked-up adult with your own share of neuroses and regrets that has nothing to do with where you came from. It can't, since you have so little memory of where you came from. Maybe the "woman question" is asking something different than it did generations ago, but Walbert seems unwilling to answer it on any terms. This book flirts dangerously with irrelevance, both as a theme, and as a casualty of a weak narrative.
"A Short History of..." is a trend in titles over the last few years, perhaps borrowing from the popularity of Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, a book that pays back its promise of a layman's ruminations of pop science unconcerned with order or specialization, just a little (not to say "short," that's Bryson's misnomer) book of raw wonder. But there is no wonder here.
Conversely, it is short, but it is not a history of women, nor even a history of one family of women, but rather the narrowing, dissipated memory of a woman through several generations, where the fact is remembered, but anything that made it relevant is forgotten or completely unexplored.
Alright, to justify that I'm going to have to reveal a spoiler, but it's something you learn in the first few chapters anyway, and, as the author explores it less than I will, I don't think it's going to spoil anything. In 1914 a woman, the mother of two young children and estranged from her husband, starves herself to death, apparently for the "woman's cause." She is defined as a Suffragette, but the evidence is meager. This, at first, is compelling. A reader will ask, why is she doing this? How does it benefit the cause? Who is paying attention? What will her children make of this? Unfortunately, even though we get some pov from her daughter, and also from her son's daughter, the only answer we get is basically, "it sucked that my mom died when I was young. I had to go to the US/to live with estranged relatives and live out a pretty unremarkable life that I will now describe in some detail..."
By the time we reach the present generation there is literally nothing left to say, so we have to read about modern-day New York City playdates and strung-out moms who drink too much wine. If there was ever any relevance to having a suffragette great-grandmother, it is totally ignored. If our understanding of a woman's role through generations is supposed to be expanded, I missed the thesis, unless I'm supposed to be convinced that a woman's role is pretty dull and/or ill-defined. If that's the case, I didn't need this novel to tell me so, and, if you're female, you didn't need this novel, either. Your evocation of a woman's role is better defined by your own biography than anything you'll find here. Is Walbert telling us how forgettable our own genealogical history is? If so, she's not telling us that it matters; you're still going to be a fucked-up adult with your own share of neuroses and regrets that has nothing to do with where you came from. It can't, since you have so little memory of where you came from. Maybe the "woman question" is asking something different than it did generations ago, but Walbert seems unwilling to answer it on any terms. This book flirts dangerously with irrelevance, both as a theme, and as a casualty of a weak narrative.
February 27, 2010
I recently purchased a copy of A Short History of Women at my library's winter book fair. Lucky me! What a stunning book. The author, Kate Walbert has written a masterpiece of powerful restraint. When I finished the book I had the Reader's Holy Grail Moment. I was deeply satisfied, wanted to talk to a fellow reader about it immediately and knew that in my house of books I had nothing else to read because what could compare? That is a lovely moment.
This is 5 generations of women's lives all starting with a British suffragette, Dorothy Trevor Townsend. Dorothy is starving herself to death as an act of civil disobedience in a WWI London hospital. The day to day routine of hospital is fascinating and a beautiful introduction to how well Walbert captures the quiet qualities of the lives of her characters in this novel. It is WW1 and most Dr's are serving overseas so with almost no males around her, Dorothy's dying days are spent in a world ruled by women. She has children she's not allowed to see, a public that is against her and time to reflect on her life and choices. Dorothy's hunger strike, the extreme embodiment of commitment, will color her children's choices for generations.
Dorothy's heirs: her daughter Evie, her son Thomas's daughter Dorothy and Dorthy's daughters Caroline and Liz all take up the suffragette/feminist mantle in some way in their lives whether they realize it or not though not in the public way their Grandmother did. The paths they choose science, the arts or as a contemporary housewife are all different but they all still chafe at what society has set out for them. Short History is no diatribe against what hasn't happened for women nor is it a celebration of girl power. There is an undercurrent of anger in these characters but also a striving to understand themselves, the complications of their relationships and what to do about it all.
Reading Short History was a pleasure. It's witty, dramatic and enlightening. Walbert's quietly authoritative writing is smart and disturbing. She moves effortlessly from the historical to the contemporary parts of the book. There are big questions here about life and the big events that change lives but they never overwhelm the storytelling. This is a brilliant, unforgettable novel.
This is 5 generations of women's lives all starting with a British suffragette, Dorothy Trevor Townsend. Dorothy is starving herself to death as an act of civil disobedience in a WWI London hospital. The day to day routine of hospital is fascinating and a beautiful introduction to how well Walbert captures the quiet qualities of the lives of her characters in this novel. It is WW1 and most Dr's are serving overseas so with almost no males around her, Dorothy's dying days are spent in a world ruled by women. She has children she's not allowed to see, a public that is against her and time to reflect on her life and choices. Dorothy's hunger strike, the extreme embodiment of commitment, will color her children's choices for generations.
Dorothy's heirs: her daughter Evie, her son Thomas's daughter Dorothy and Dorthy's daughters Caroline and Liz all take up the suffragette/feminist mantle in some way in their lives whether they realize it or not though not in the public way their Grandmother did. The paths they choose science, the arts or as a contemporary housewife are all different but they all still chafe at what society has set out for them. Short History is no diatribe against what hasn't happened for women nor is it a celebration of girl power. There is an undercurrent of anger in these characters but also a striving to understand themselves, the complications of their relationships and what to do about it all.
Reading Short History was a pleasure. It's witty, dramatic and enlightening. Walbert's quietly authoritative writing is smart and disturbing. She moves effortlessly from the historical to the contemporary parts of the book. There are big questions here about life and the big events that change lives but they never overwhelm the storytelling. This is a brilliant, unforgettable novel.
March 25, 2010
My faith in "best books" lists has been restored.
After being catatonically underwhelmed by "Let the Great World Spin", I have been deeply moved and deeply impressed by "A Short History of Women", . I have read Kate Walbert's two previous books, and this one, I believe, catapults her into the universe of excellence. I can understand why it was one of the Ten Best Books of 2009 as selected by the NYT.
Interleaving the lives of five generations of an English/American family, Walbert uses the fight for women's surffrage and the nobility of Florence Nightingale's commitment to service as historical place-markers while presenting, with an impeccable selection of specific detail, the choices that women of every generation face. If God truly is in the details, then Walbert ascends to a heavenly realm with this book. To me, it's the ability to infuse a plot with teeny, tiny details that elevates a good story into a memorable and affecting one.
This book is, purportedly, a short saga on the usual ongoing emotional and intellectual struggles of women to find happiness, but it manages to avoid cliches quite well. Strangely enough, however, it's the passage about one husband, a POW in World War II who loves Browning's poetry, that sears the heart and brought me to tears.
After being catatonically underwhelmed by "Let the Great World Spin", I have been deeply moved and deeply impressed by "A Short History of Women", . I have read Kate Walbert's two previous books, and this one, I believe, catapults her into the universe of excellence. I can understand why it was one of the Ten Best Books of 2009 as selected by the NYT.
Interleaving the lives of five generations of an English/American family, Walbert uses the fight for women's surffrage and the nobility of Florence Nightingale's commitment to service as historical place-markers while presenting, with an impeccable selection of specific detail, the choices that women of every generation face. If God truly is in the details, then Walbert ascends to a heavenly realm with this book. To me, it's the ability to infuse a plot with teeny, tiny details that elevates a good story into a memorable and affecting one.
This book is, purportedly, a short saga on the usual ongoing emotional and intellectual struggles of women to find happiness, but it manages to avoid cliches quite well. Strangely enough, however, it's the passage about one husband, a POW in World War II who loves Browning's poetry, that sears the heart and brought me to tears.
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June 10, 2011I give up. I'm halfway through and I just can't bring myself to care. I have to flip back and forth between the story and the family tree in the front of the book, which really disrupts my reading flow, and I am just really not caring all that much about any of the characters in the book, with the exception of maybe Charles (ironic considering the book's title and subject).
I'm really disappointed in this, because I liked the idea of a novel that tells the stories of several generations of women in a family. I've often thought about the way we play out the life stories of our parents and our grandparents, and how our children and grandchildren will play out our life stories, so it's a narrative thread I'm really fascinated by (and part of why I really enjoyed "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan), but this book just didn't grab my interest.
Maybe if I had hung in until the end...but honestly, I've got about fifty unread books clamoring for my attention. And you know what? Life is too short to spend it reading books I don't care about.
Again, no rating because I don't feel it's fair to rate a book I haven't finished.
I'm really disappointed in this, because I liked the idea of a novel that tells the stories of several generations of women in a family. I've often thought about the way we play out the life stories of our parents and our grandparents, and how our children and grandchildren will play out our life stories, so it's a narrative thread I'm really fascinated by (and part of why I really enjoyed "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan), but this book just didn't grab my interest.
Maybe if I had hung in until the end...but honestly, I've got about fifty unread books clamoring for my attention. And you know what? Life is too short to spend it reading books I don't care about.
Again, no rating because I don't feel it's fair to rate a book I haven't finished.
April 20, 2009
A Short History of Women is an eloquent and lovely novel that begins at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragette who starves herself and, ultimately, dies to further her cause. Kate Walbert’s novel is not simply about the repercussions of Dorothy’s death, though, but rather about how her actions echo, reverberate, and resound through the lives of her descendents.
Walbert’s novel moves fluidly from the time of Florence Nightingale, who screamed into the void to be heard, to the age of the Internet, where millions of voices are heard, albeit through the gauze of electronic anonymity. Walbert’s beautifully kaleidoscopic novel is about the quest for self-expression and self-worth; moreover, it is a thoughtful and thought-provoking look at the relationship between history, politics, and personal identity. I highly recommend A Short History of Women to anyone looking for a lyrically-written novel filled with stunning images and unforgettable characters.
Walbert’s novel moves fluidly from the time of Florence Nightingale, who screamed into the void to be heard, to the age of the Internet, where millions of voices are heard, albeit through the gauze of electronic anonymity. Walbert’s beautifully kaleidoscopic novel is about the quest for self-expression and self-worth; moreover, it is a thoughtful and thought-provoking look at the relationship between history, politics, and personal identity. I highly recommend A Short History of Women to anyone looking for a lyrically-written novel filled with stunning images and unforgettable characters.
March 17, 2009
This new novel by renowned author Kate Walbert gives us glimpses into the lives of 5 related women over four generations. It begins in England in 1914 when Dorothy Townsend chooses to starve herself to death in the name of women's suffrage, leaving her two children orphaned. So begins the legacy of how this family's women deal with what was called in the 19th century "The Woman Question". Bouncing about in time to show various vignettes between the women and their families over the years, it's a fascinating study of society's treatment of women and their various reactions to it over the past hundred years or so.
November 13, 2012
I grabbed this paperback for a long flight (China), thinking that I could jettison it easily on the way home. A few pages in, I realized I would not want to get rid of the book and would make room for it somehow on the return flight. I tend to enjoy novels that go back and forth in time, and this book describes five generations of women who are quite remarkable. As the mother of daughters and the daughter of a strong mother, I often wonder (and worry) about the impacts we have on each other. This account makes it clear that each woman must find and develop her own voice, and that life often makes mockery of our intentions. This is a terrific read and would make a great book group selection.
May 1, 2023
A story telling us that women always have it worse, no matter the historical time we live in. You always end up unhappy: husband or no husband, kids or no kids, career or no career. Much too depressive for my taste.
December 14, 2015
By "a short history" here, we're talking about five generations of women ranging from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st. There's a handy lineage at the front of the book, and I do strongly suggest using it, because all of the women have the same first name - Dorothy - and there's very little differentiating the characters from one another except for the time and place mentioned at the beginning of each chapter. Which I then promptly forgot by the middle of each chapter, and I'd have to try to remember which Dorothy is showcased here; the one exception was "Dora" because a) she changed her name just slightly, b) she had the teeniest-tiniest part in the whole experience that it actually stood out, and c) she just felt different.
The overall complaint here is that there is a great opportunity to write about the female experience and history here, and it feels so shallow throughout. We barely get to know any of the women besides the most surface explanations. Even the suffragette, Dorothy Townsend, who starves herself.
Similar to the new movie, Suffragette, I expected more strength behind the portrayals of the women the stories focused on, and yet I walked away from both feeling that I have no better idea of the history of women than I did before. While I'm lucky enough to have had some experience learning the history through school and on my own, I can appreciate that not everyone has had that same experience, and I cannot say with any confidence that this book would be helpful to them in any way. If I could barely muster the strength to feel anything for any of the women, then I'm not sure many other readers will either.
The overall complaint here is that there is a great opportunity to write about the female experience and history here, and it feels so shallow throughout. We barely get to know any of the women besides the most surface explanations. Even the suffragette, Dorothy Townsend, who starves herself.
Similar to the new movie, Suffragette, I expected more strength behind the portrayals of the women the stories focused on, and yet I walked away from both feeling that I have no better idea of the history of women than I did before. While I'm lucky enough to have had some experience learning the history through school and on my own, I can appreciate that not everyone has had that same experience, and I cannot say with any confidence that this book would be helpful to them in any way. If I could barely muster the strength to feel anything for any of the women, then I'm not sure many other readers will either.
August 30, 2009
To the author's credit, this is an ambitious book: the interconnected stories making up _A Short History of Women_ all concern feminism since suffrage, a heavy topic which could have easily led to the book being pigeon-holed and disregarded as an "idea book." As I read it, I remained skeptical (being of the anti-didactic camp when it comes to literature) but I did find myself riveted two or three times by how well Walbert crystallized certain aspects of the female experience, including, particularly, her attention to "listening" in the first few stories -- i.e., the (historical or continuing) expectation that women should listen ad infinitum without protesting or responding critically.
Otherwise, the writing is strong and the characters are complex, but only one of the stories stuck out as being particularly strong as a standalone (and I hate to say it's the one from the New Yorker, which led me to the book in the first place). I also would have hoped at least one of the characters could have come out on top, but the only one who seems to approach this is the matriarch of the family, who (spoiler) starves herself for suffrage rights. Many of the other women can't seem to define themselves apart from men, try as they might -- possibly Walbert's intention, but still a bit of a disappointment. It's fine by me if the characters in a book don't come to a particularly happy end, but to see their disappointments framed in the context of female experience (i.e., as a direct result of their gender instead of their experiences as human beings) made it a much more bitter end.
Otherwise, the writing is strong and the characters are complex, but only one of the stories stuck out as being particularly strong as a standalone (and I hate to say it's the one from the New Yorker, which led me to the book in the first place). I also would have hoped at least one of the characters could have come out on top, but the only one who seems to approach this is the matriarch of the family, who (spoiler) starves herself for suffrage rights. Many of the other women can't seem to define themselves apart from men, try as they might -- possibly Walbert's intention, but still a bit of a disappointment. It's fine by me if the characters in a book don't come to a particularly happy end, but to see their disappointments framed in the context of female experience (i.e., as a direct result of their gender instead of their experiences as human beings) made it a much more bitter end.
January 5, 2011
Every now and then, my library has displays based soley on a book's cover. Sometimes they have a large bookcase, where each shelf has covers of a specific colour to make the rainbow, starting at red and going all the way down to violet. On one day that I went in, the shelves alternated between red covers and white covers. Intrigued, I picked up the books with interesting titles and read the descriptions. This was one that stood out to me.
A Short History of Women chronicles the struggles of the different generations of one family, stemming from the suffragate Dorothy Townstead, who starved herself for her cause. The concept of the novel- travelling down the family line to see how Dorothy's actions inspired and affected the future women of her line- was interesting. But the book itself, while written in a very unique and poetic manner, was hard to follow. It jumped around, not only from character to character, but through time. I didn't have any feeling of continuity and the names were all so similar that I often had to reference the family tree at the start of the book. And because it jumped so much between the different women, I never had enough time with one particular character to really form a bond with them, and when I would return to their story a few chapters later, I would somewhat forget what their main issue or battle was.
It took me a while to read this book, mostly because i couldn't get into it at the start, so I read other books at the same time. I finally sat down the other day and decided to give it a go, and it turned out to be a decent read. I'm glad that I finished it, but I'm not sure if I would read other's by Kate Walbert.
A Short History of Women chronicles the struggles of the different generations of one family, stemming from the suffragate Dorothy Townstead, who starved herself for her cause. The concept of the novel- travelling down the family line to see how Dorothy's actions inspired and affected the future women of her line- was interesting. But the book itself, while written in a very unique and poetic manner, was hard to follow. It jumped around, not only from character to character, but through time. I didn't have any feeling of continuity and the names were all so similar that I often had to reference the family tree at the start of the book. And because it jumped so much between the different women, I never had enough time with one particular character to really form a bond with them, and when I would return to their story a few chapters later, I would somewhat forget what their main issue or battle was.
It took me a while to read this book, mostly because i couldn't get into it at the start, so I read other books at the same time. I finally sat down the other day and decided to give it a go, and it turned out to be a decent read. I'm glad that I finished it, but I'm not sure if I would read other's by Kate Walbert.
January 19, 2010
LIke others here I read this book because of the absolutely stellar review in the Times Book Review. The premise -- tracing five generations of women beginning with a British suffragist who starved herself to death for the cause -- definitely appealed to me. Fiction all about women, and feminist women at that! But also like others I wanted to like this more than I actually did. I wanted to love it.
Walbert's writing is beautiful, no doubt about it. I also think the greatest strength of this novel is her ability to describe the ways in which we, as human beings, find ourselves wondering how we got to where we are and how that relates to where we thought we might end up and what life is supposed to be for. Meaning-of-life type questions. Also questions about happiness and fulfillment and hard choices and sacrifice. Big stuff, in other words. All of that I very much appreciated, and that it was all framed around women -- who have generally been asked to make greater sacrifices than men, especially for others, namely men -- made it that much more compelling.
All that said, I found myself not loving the actual characters as much as I wanted to. There were exceptions: Evelyn (second generation and a chemistry professor at Barnard) and Caroline (fourth generation and a workaholic) very much appealed to me. But the others not as much. Of course a reader shouldn't have to like all the characters for the book to be meaningful, but it certainly helps in actually getting through it.
Walbert's writing is beautiful, no doubt about it. I also think the greatest strength of this novel is her ability to describe the ways in which we, as human beings, find ourselves wondering how we got to where we are and how that relates to where we thought we might end up and what life is supposed to be for. Meaning-of-life type questions. Also questions about happiness and fulfillment and hard choices and sacrifice. Big stuff, in other words. All of that I very much appreciated, and that it was all framed around women -- who have generally been asked to make greater sacrifices than men, especially for others, namely men -- made it that much more compelling.
All that said, I found myself not loving the actual characters as much as I wanted to. There were exceptions: Evelyn (second generation and a chemistry professor at Barnard) and Caroline (fourth generation and a workaholic) very much appealed to me. But the others not as much. Of course a reader shouldn't have to like all the characters for the book to be meaningful, but it certainly helps in actually getting through it.
March 8, 2010
Kate Walbert's "A Short Hisotry of Women" is a meditation on the complications and conflicts of women's lives, no clearer or more easily resolved now than they were 150 years ago. More opportunity has not made lives or choices any less full of yearning, questioning, or regret.
Walbert's narrators include and descend from an early 20th century suffragette, who starves herself to death to call attention to "The Woman Question," and, seemingly, to justify her life. She leaves behind two children. Her daughter and her son's female progeny choose different ways to find their own meanings, but all reflect the growth of a woman's options.
And yet.
These women still feel an emptiness, a hollowness, a dissatisfaction. They want to make a difference, to do something, to be heard. Do they matter?
They still can't sort out their roles as mothers, daughters, wives, friends, teachers, and reconcile them with meaningful work. Because those roles still do not qualify as meaningful in our culture. They are unable to find the right balance between connection and their own wants and needs.
Moving ahead, but not necessarily moving forward. They've "lost the forest for the trees" as one of the women laments.
"Who are we? They wanted to know. Tell us, who? and what should we do next?"
Walbert's narrators include and descend from an early 20th century suffragette, who starves herself to death to call attention to "The Woman Question," and, seemingly, to justify her life. She leaves behind two children. Her daughter and her son's female progeny choose different ways to find their own meanings, but all reflect the growth of a woman's options.
And yet.
These women still feel an emptiness, a hollowness, a dissatisfaction. They want to make a difference, to do something, to be heard. Do they matter?
They still can't sort out their roles as mothers, daughters, wives, friends, teachers, and reconcile them with meaningful work. Because those roles still do not qualify as meaningful in our culture. They are unable to find the right balance between connection and their own wants and needs.
Moving ahead, but not necessarily moving forward. They've "lost the forest for the trees" as one of the women laments.
"Who are we? They wanted to know. Tell us, who? and what should we do next?"
November 14, 2011
This novel recounts vignettes in the lives of a British suffragette who starved to death for the cause and a handful of her female descendants. The timeline spans the late 1800s to the present time, but it is anything but chronological. It starts and ends with Evelyn, daughter of the suffragette Townsend, but the intervening chapters hopscotch in time, with central characters often being revisited at different points in their lives. Written in spare, compressed, but gorgeous prose, the novel brilliantly captures such cultural artifacts as British academic snobbery, a seventies consciousness raising group, blogs, playdates, and modern anemic political activism in the USA. You see echoes of the starved suffragette Dorothy Trevor Townsend in her American descendants though she died young, propelling her orphaned son and daughter across the ocean to the US.
This book is not easy to read, at least not in the beginning. Many characters have the same given name, and the forward and backward seesawing of time as well as constantly changing settings can be confusing. Persist, however, and you will be rewarded.
This book is not easy to read, at least not in the beginning. Many characters have the same given name, and the forward and backward seesawing of time as well as constantly changing settings can be confusing. Persist, however, and you will be rewarded.
July 27, 2009
Wish there were 3 and a half stars! I more than liked this but didn't love it. It's a misrepresentation to call this a novel (as the cover does)--it's actually a collection of linked stories. But there is much to admire in Walbert's prose, and I'm a fan of short stories in any case so I was happy to read all of them. I felt the most engaged in the character of Evelyn and ended up reading all of her stories first, then reading the others in between. The stories are in a confusing order and jump back and forth between time, place and main character, which I felt did not serve the book well, and further undermines the claim that it's a novel. All in all, I think the book captures well the evolution of the role of women in Western society, the struggles of women only a century ago, and how conflicted and unsatisfied women remain with the outcome of those struggles. The struggle against external forces has merely become an internal one.
February 5, 2010
I highly recommend Kate Walbert's novel A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN, which zigzags through time and geography as it tells the story of a handful of women. All of them are related by blood, though sometimes unaware of the other branches on the family tree. One is a British suffragette on a hunger strike; one is a woman with grown children who engages in civil disobedience at Dover, Delaware, where the bodies come back from the war in Iraq; one is a chemistry professor at Barnard College; one an affluent artist/mother in post-911 New York. Their stories are connected not only by recurring family traits and an examination of themes pertinent to the lives of women--motherhood, career, activism--but by the light repetition of certain motifs or phrases: She was listening and then she wasn't. A lucky hat. Tracing these through the novel on a second reading might be an exquisite pleasure. And the book allows multiple readings, because it is, as promised, short.
December 15, 2014
It’s not surprising “A Short History of Women” has a three star rating on Amazon and not much more on Goodreads. It’s a brilliant book with smart writing and quirky characters, but the audience that can appreciate it most is narrow. It speaks to women who’ve ‘been-there-done-that’ as the saying goes. Women who have raised the kids, managed a household, struggled through marriage, and are old enough to know what that gnawing void feels like. It’s the quest to find a sense of purpose that strings the histories of the characters together—four generations of women. The characters struggle for purpose is so subtle you might almost miss it, yet Walbert weaves together the seemingly insignificant everyday life scenarios so beautifully by the last chapter it's hard to miss.
Which leads us to the title. The title is intriguing—it conjures up numerous possibilities. But it’s a perfect fit. The novel gives the reader a glimpse into the lives of the characters starting with Dorothy Townsend in 1914, a suffragist who starves herself to death for the cause. Wilbert puts the reader in the middle of the scenarios with Dorothy and her descendants, almost as an invisible observer watching a scene at a point in time. The scenarios go back and forth, each in a different era which several book reviewers found confusing, disjointed. I agree—though if one approaches the book as a collection of stories, it’s easier to appreciate the rich details of Walbert’s prose. No matter which way you approach the book, one can’t help but marvel at the progression of women’s rights over the generations yet be moved by how women’s internal struggle for sense of self is timeless.
Which leads us to the title. The title is intriguing—it conjures up numerous possibilities. But it’s a perfect fit. The novel gives the reader a glimpse into the lives of the characters starting with Dorothy Townsend in 1914, a suffragist who starves herself to death for the cause. Wilbert puts the reader in the middle of the scenarios with Dorothy and her descendants, almost as an invisible observer watching a scene at a point in time. The scenarios go back and forth, each in a different era which several book reviewers found confusing, disjointed. I agree—though if one approaches the book as a collection of stories, it’s easier to appreciate the rich details of Walbert’s prose. No matter which way you approach the book, one can’t help but marvel at the progression of women’s rights over the generations yet be moved by how women’s internal struggle for sense of self is timeless.
January 25, 2011
When this book was first suggested for our book club, I thought it was non-fiction. I didn't see the (A Novel) label at the bottom until after I started reading.
I enjoyed the book -- after I got past the first 33 pages. The writing style was annoying at first. It seemed cryptic and confusing. When the book got to the first chapter of Dorothy Townsend Barrett, the writing changed and it was a much more pleasant read. I did have to keep going back to the lineage chart to remember who was who - too many Dorothys!
I thought all of the women were sad each in her own way. They each had very different lives, but were not happy even when they had choices ( a career, not marrying, an education). When they paused to reflect, at different points in their lives, they each seemed to be constrained by something. What was restraining them (or causing self-doubt) seemed more intangible as we read the more modern women's stories.
What was their response to "The Woman Question"? One starved herself to death to gain the right to vote; one excelled in academia perhaps because her mother did not have the opportunity or perhaps to escape marriage; one married but decided after many years that she didn't like her marriage so she engaged in civil disobedience; and lastly I don't know what getting drunk at an uncomfortable playdate was supposed to mean.
I liked the book and would give it 3.5 stars.
I enjoyed the book -- after I got past the first 33 pages. The writing style was annoying at first. It seemed cryptic and confusing. When the book got to the first chapter of Dorothy Townsend Barrett, the writing changed and it was a much more pleasant read. I did have to keep going back to the lineage chart to remember who was who - too many Dorothys!
I thought all of the women were sad each in her own way. They each had very different lives, but were not happy even when they had choices ( a career, not marrying, an education). When they paused to reflect, at different points in their lives, they each seemed to be constrained by something. What was restraining them (or causing self-doubt) seemed more intangible as we read the more modern women's stories.
What was their response to "The Woman Question"? One starved herself to death to gain the right to vote; one excelled in academia perhaps because her mother did not have the opportunity or perhaps to escape marriage; one married but decided after many years that she didn't like her marriage so she engaged in civil disobedience; and lastly I don't know what getting drunk at an uncomfortable playdate was supposed to mean.
I liked the book and would give it 3.5 stars.
September 30, 2009
What a smart, good book. Walbert has created five generations - a century+ - of women in one family. Starting with Dorothy, an English suffragist and mother of two, who starves herself to death, Walbert shows each woman, quietly or not-so-quietly, doing her best to figure things out while not quite connecting with her family.
The book's structure is a triumph. Walbert jumps through the decades, from character to character and then back to character, gradually showing the influence that each generation has on the others and proving that the whole of the book is greater than the sum of its chapters. I did need a sticky note for frequent consultations to the family tree at the front of the book, but I never got confused or overwhelmed by the character-hopping. It's a relatively short novel and everything - every minor character and seemingly minor incident - counts. I'm still figuring out connections now, although I finished the book a few days ago.
The book is also quietly political, covering feminist issues (yes, primarily focusing on white, privileged women) and English and American war experiences over the last century. A sad and lonely tone runs throughout, but it's not dispriting. I'm not sure it's a tone that every reader will relate to (as evidenced by the mixed goodreads reviews), but it really worked for me.
The book's structure is a triumph. Walbert jumps through the decades, from character to character and then back to character, gradually showing the influence that each generation has on the others and proving that the whole of the book is greater than the sum of its chapters. I did need a sticky note for frequent consultations to the family tree at the front of the book, but I never got confused or overwhelmed by the character-hopping. It's a relatively short novel and everything - every minor character and seemingly minor incident - counts. I'm still figuring out connections now, although I finished the book a few days ago.
The book is also quietly political, covering feminist issues (yes, primarily focusing on white, privileged women) and English and American war experiences over the last century. A sad and lonely tone runs throughout, but it's not dispriting. I'm not sure it's a tone that every reader will relate to (as evidenced by the mixed goodreads reviews), but it really worked for me.
March 23, 2015
This was a thematic read to celebrate the national women's history month. Seems like a perfect choice and from a thematic perspective it really was. As a book, it was more mixed, less than perfect. The literary quality of the work is unquestionable, but the somewhat emotionally aloof way of writing and the timeline jumping narrative too a while to get used to and get into. This story of several generations of women in a family, starting with late 1900s and continuing into 2000s was interesting and thought provoking, almost more so in retrospect than as an immediate reaction. The sort of thing to appreciate more than to love. Not necessarily the kind of book that makes one go devour the author's back catalogue, but a quality read all the same and a very quick one at that. National women's history month...consider yourself celebrated.
February 6, 2016
This novel of several generations opens with a suffragette in England going on a hunger strike in 1914, which her thirteen-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son witness. We then follow the lives of her daughter and her son's daughter and (great) grandchildren until we're in post–9/11 New York.
I really enjoyed the story of each woman wanting, and sometimes finding a way, to Do Something. I enjoyed one woman's fascination with Florence Nightingale as more than a nurse.
The only issue I had with the book was that it is not linear, and that made it particularly difficult to follow the story. I wasn't able to get lost in it, as I kept having to flip back to the family tree in the front and switch countries and centuries throughout.
I really enjoyed the story of each woman wanting, and sometimes finding a way, to Do Something. I enjoyed one woman's fascination with Florence Nightingale as more than a nurse.
The only issue I had with the book was that it is not linear, and that made it particularly difficult to follow the story. I wasn't able to get lost in it, as I kept having to flip back to the family tree in the front and switch countries and centuries throughout.
October 25, 2019
This novel is told from the viewpoint of 5 generations of women, beginning at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragist who starved herself to death in protest in 1914. The same issues and her response to them affect her descendents in different and yet similar ways. This is an engaging book, not at all a polemic. It made me see issues from the perspective of the people who loved the women as well. The changing viewpoints works for some authors, but, in this case, I was often confused. This was the one factor that detracted from the experience for me.
March 20, 2022
She had tried to play, she might have told James, and never got it: music. There were so many things she never got, she could have told him, yet even here, even here with him, she wanted to paint herself in a different way, to flaunt the new lineage, to be the lineage he had helped her discover so that she could stand for something other than mother. And what was so wrong with that? Why couldn't she just be that? It is all he needs now. It is apparently all that they ever need. [...]
"So I forgive you your trespasses," he said.
"Hallelujah," she said.
"And besides, I'm hoping you're wrong," he said.
"It wouldn't be the first time."
"If you are, I'll come back and rattle the windows," he said. Think of it as my 'so there.'"
~~Women stand in a poster parade, organized by the Women's Freedom League to promote the suffrage message. The opening scene occurs between Dorothy Townsend Barrett, grand-daughter of a suffragette, and her son who is dying of leukemia. She looks back on her life, with her primary role as mother, and wonders how she is carrying on her grandmother's legacy.
First two sentences: Mum starved herself for suffrage, Grandmother claiming it was just like Mum to take a cause too far. Mum said she had no choice.
In A Short History of Women , Kate Walbert introduces us to the Townsend genealogy. The chapters skip between six related females . Matriarch, Dorothy Trevor Townsend, was part of the first wave of female students at Cambridge University (although they were not allowed to talk in class, and were issued certificates instead of diplomas). She died young due to a hunger strike in the suffragette cause. She leaves behind two children--Evelyn (she voices the first two sentences) and Thomas. Thomas names his own daughter Dorothy, and she is the one referenced above. In addition to her deceased son, she has two daughters--Liz and Caroline--who also have chapters in the book. A final brief chapter records the voice of the youngest generation in Caroline's daughter--also Dorothy, born in 1989. Walbert explores what has changed, and what remains the same for women over the course of a transformative century--from 1880 to 1989.
My two cents: I anticipated reading this novel--from the interesting cover, to the beautiful binding, to the premise of the novel. But like many other reviewers, it fell flat for me. I think the biggest distractor was the way that the novel jumped around. It's already a short book at under 250 pages. Then fold in 6 different POVs, with a random timeline, and many characters with the same name. I kept having to flip to the front of the book to reorient myself to which character I was reading about. This could have been a genuinely good read, an in-depth look at the comparisons and contrasts in women's' roles showcased down through the generations of a family. Instead it turned into cliff notes of lives, vignettes. But we never stayed long enough to get to know them. Which makes it very hard to care, to become invested. The prose is excellent, beautiful at times. But the story just couldn't lived up. Given 2.5 stars or a rating of "Above average". Recommended as a library checkout if the premise interests you.
Other favorite quotes: He succumbed, Dorothy would always say of him, as if drink were a particularly hard rain that could wedge loose what hadn't been firmly battened down.
~~"Let's be kind," Jean says, looping the bow, face down in concentration so that her voice seems to issue not from her, but from a whisper somewhere at the center of us. "Kindness costs so little. Why can't we, at the very least, be kind?"
~~"Oh," they say, Caroline noticing that this woman's face no longer matches her neck, as if she'd erased the years she could afford and then, short on cash, figured the hell with it and left well enough alone.
Further Reading: Multiple readers downplayed or questioned the oldest Dorothy's hunger strike. While her strike outside prison was unusual, countless suffragettes engaged in hunger strikes while in prison. Several died from their weakened states after release. Here's a very good article talking about this particular chapter in history. https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/dis....
~~Two generations down, Dorothy #2 idolizes Florence Nightingale--not as a nurse, but in the ways in which she opened doors for women. Here's a short article talking about Florence's influential role in history. https://aleteia.org/2018/01/06/how-fl...
"So I forgive you your trespasses," he said.
"Hallelujah," she said.
"And besides, I'm hoping you're wrong," he said.
"It wouldn't be the first time."
"If you are, I'll come back and rattle the windows," he said. Think of it as my 'so there.'"
~~Women stand in a poster parade, organized by the Women's Freedom League to promote the suffrage message. The opening scene occurs between Dorothy Townsend Barrett, grand-daughter of a suffragette, and her son who is dying of leukemia. She looks back on her life, with her primary role as mother, and wonders how she is carrying on her grandmother's legacy.
First two sentences: Mum starved herself for suffrage, Grandmother claiming it was just like Mum to take a cause too far. Mum said she had no choice.
In A Short History of Women , Kate Walbert introduces us to the Townsend genealogy. The chapters skip between six related females . Matriarch, Dorothy Trevor Townsend, was part of the first wave of female students at Cambridge University (although they were not allowed to talk in class, and were issued certificates instead of diplomas). She died young due to a hunger strike in the suffragette cause. She leaves behind two children--Evelyn (she voices the first two sentences) and Thomas. Thomas names his own daughter Dorothy, and she is the one referenced above. In addition to her deceased son, she has two daughters--Liz and Caroline--who also have chapters in the book. A final brief chapter records the voice of the youngest generation in Caroline's daughter--also Dorothy, born in 1989. Walbert explores what has changed, and what remains the same for women over the course of a transformative century--from 1880 to 1989.
My two cents: I anticipated reading this novel--from the interesting cover, to the beautiful binding, to the premise of the novel. But like many other reviewers, it fell flat for me. I think the biggest distractor was the way that the novel jumped around. It's already a short book at under 250 pages. Then fold in 6 different POVs, with a random timeline, and many characters with the same name. I kept having to flip to the front of the book to reorient myself to which character I was reading about. This could have been a genuinely good read, an in-depth look at the comparisons and contrasts in women's' roles showcased down through the generations of a family. Instead it turned into cliff notes of lives, vignettes. But we never stayed long enough to get to know them. Which makes it very hard to care, to become invested. The prose is excellent, beautiful at times. But the story just couldn't lived up. Given 2.5 stars or a rating of "Above average". Recommended as a library checkout if the premise interests you.
Other favorite quotes: He succumbed, Dorothy would always say of him, as if drink were a particularly hard rain that could wedge loose what hadn't been firmly battened down.
~~"Let's be kind," Jean says, looping the bow, face down in concentration so that her voice seems to issue not from her, but from a whisper somewhere at the center of us. "Kindness costs so little. Why can't we, at the very least, be kind?"
~~"Oh," they say, Caroline noticing that this woman's face no longer matches her neck, as if she'd erased the years she could afford and then, short on cash, figured the hell with it and left well enough alone.
Further Reading: Multiple readers downplayed or questioned the oldest Dorothy's hunger strike. While her strike outside prison was unusual, countless suffragettes engaged in hunger strikes while in prison. Several died from their weakened states after release. Here's a very good article talking about this particular chapter in history. https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/dis....
~~Two generations down, Dorothy #2 idolizes Florence Nightingale--not as a nurse, but in the ways in which she opened doors for women. Here's a short article talking about Florence's influential role in history. https://aleteia.org/2018/01/06/how-fl...
December 19, 2015
Nope, this did next-to-nothing for me. A dull meandering start, a few instances of momentary potential interest, all left lying unexplored, and then a meandering pointless finish.
July 28, 2018
“A hollow bone. I mean, it’s as if I echo, or rather, feel in myself an absence. The days spill out. They’re frantic, really. There’s so much to do! But at certain times I feel as if I’ve forgotten something, as if there’s a question I’ve forgotten to answer.”
In A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN, Kate Walbert traces the lineage of British suffragist Dorothy Trevor Townsend and how her decision to consciously starve to death for a cause echoes through the lives of her descendants.
It starts with Evelyn’s recollection of her mother Dorothy on her deathbed and eventually goes on to cover 5 generations in different periods – from the late 1800s to the 2000s. The vignettes, filled to the brim with details unique to each period, are coherent regardless if consumed as a whole or separately.
Beyond the central characters, what I particularly loved was the excellent way Walbert drew the lives of other characters in the novel – the widow Stephen who started a platonic companionship with Evelyn, the veteran Charles who was devoted to a wife who found married life miserable, and the doctor who fought to live through the war for the sake of his “friend,” the librarian. They were written not just for the sake of placing another character but of a genuine desire to put a face on the considerations and complications of life.
At the risk of being simplistic, I feel that the novel’s an attempt to show women’s struggle to find an identity beyond that of a daughter, a wife, and a mother. It is also a meditation on the unfortunate reality that many are unable to go beyond these preconceived identities, even if they try so hard.
In A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN, Kate Walbert traces the lineage of British suffragist Dorothy Trevor Townsend and how her decision to consciously starve to death for a cause echoes through the lives of her descendants.
It starts with Evelyn’s recollection of her mother Dorothy on her deathbed and eventually goes on to cover 5 generations in different periods – from the late 1800s to the 2000s. The vignettes, filled to the brim with details unique to each period, are coherent regardless if consumed as a whole or separately.
Beyond the central characters, what I particularly loved was the excellent way Walbert drew the lives of other characters in the novel – the widow Stephen who started a platonic companionship with Evelyn, the veteran Charles who was devoted to a wife who found married life miserable, and the doctor who fought to live through the war for the sake of his “friend,” the librarian. They were written not just for the sake of placing another character but of a genuine desire to put a face on the considerations and complications of life.
At the risk of being simplistic, I feel that the novel’s an attempt to show women’s struggle to find an identity beyond that of a daughter, a wife, and a mother. It is also a meditation on the unfortunate reality that many are unable to go beyond these preconceived identities, even if they try so hard.
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