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A review by brogan7
Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
2.0
I knew from the cover that this would be a light read, but even for a light read this was especially lacking in analysis.
The premise of the book is that women who take three drugs from the same company (and possibly a shot of Botox) become invisible. The women are perimenopausal, so at an age when invisibility is actually quite familiar, i.e. the women's families don't even notice there has been a change.
I was waiting for the funny part to delve into a canny analysis of the pharmaceutical industry. Instead I got a 1970s-era-esque novel, where the thing the mother is worried about is her neighbour's kids smoking a bit of pot (the innocence!) and her husband is a doctor whom she shadows one day (with her newfound invisibility--as long as she travels naked)--and she feels SO SORRY for how BURDENED he is... (umm...again, this feels dated. Our main character doesn't feel like a person from 2012.).
And then...the pharmaceutical company really isn't that bad ("It's not the evil empire...They're making a lot of good drugs, things people need. The problem is they're making too much money. If they were willing to suspend just one of the drugs, say the Ostafoss or the Singsall, just until they got the interaction problem worked out, that would be enough." (p.211)) Ahem. Right. It's ok to accuse the drug companies of making too much money, and it's ok to ask them kindly, on the side, to withdraw just one of their drugs (whichever one), for the sake of women's safety... This is analysis-Lite, if you want it, because that's all you're really going to get. I was curious about what would happen when all the invisible women got together (consciousness-raising groups), but in the end that didn't deliver anything either.
A disappointing read. Some clever lines.
The premise of the book is that women who take three drugs from the same company (and possibly a shot of Botox) become invisible. The women are perimenopausal, so at an age when invisibility is actually quite familiar, i.e. the women's families don't even notice there has been a change.
I was waiting for the funny part to delve into a canny analysis of the pharmaceutical industry. Instead I got a 1970s-era-esque novel, where the thing the mother is worried about is her neighbour's kids smoking a bit of pot (the innocence!) and her husband is a doctor whom she shadows one day (with her newfound invisibility--as long as she travels naked)--and she feels SO SORRY for how BURDENED he is... (umm...again, this feels dated. Our main character doesn't feel like a person from 2012.).
And then...the pharmaceutical company really isn't that bad ("It's not the evil empire...They're making a lot of good drugs, things people need. The problem is they're making too much money. If they were willing to suspend just one of the drugs, say the Ostafoss or the Singsall, just until they got the interaction problem worked out, that would be enough." (p.211)) Ahem. Right. It's ok to accuse the drug companies of making too much money, and it's ok to ask them kindly, on the side, to withdraw just one of their drugs (whichever one), for the sake of women's safety... This is analysis-Lite, if you want it, because that's all you're really going to get. I was curious about what would happen when all the invisible women got together (consciousness-raising groups), but in the end that didn't deliver anything either.
A disappointing read. Some clever lines.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny and Sexism