A review by cdale8
A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert

3.0

The thread throughout the book of suffrage/revolution/going-against-society's-norm was interesting, and right up my alley, but the characters were drawn such that I really couldn't FEEL anything for them. This is coming from someone having had a decision-changing ivy league experience almost exactly as described by one of the characters in the book, so I should have been eating this stuff up. Maybe it was the erratic timeframes, the just-short-of-explicit conversations between the women of differing generations, or perhaps just simply my inability to bond with the characters. Whatever it was, I came away from the novel with the feeling of having "gotten" the big hit-you-over-the-head idea but not the nuanced reasons/emotions behind the women's motivations for their decisions to act or not to act (or, rather when to act). I assume that the author had some vision of this undercurrent and was conveying it, but I just didn't grab on for that part of the ride. Or, maybe I was just hoping for a more moving experience than was to be delivered. If I had lower self-esteem, I'd be feeling too stupid to have read the book. I hate coming away from books thinking that my intellect was not up to the challenge of the author's writing.