Book Reviews
Of course, we all have something on the go...
Explore captivating Book Reviews on Brenda McCourt Writes, your go-to source for literary insights.
The Book Club for Troublesome Women
Harper Muse
Marie Bostwick c.2025
This is popular fiction at its best. A dear friend gave me this book for Christmas, and I am currently at page 239 of 363.
Bostwick's book tells the story of four married women living in a new subdivision in Washington, DC, in 1963. They start a book club. They choose Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique for their first read, and after that they call themselves "The Bettys".
Relatively quickly I became engrossed in the story, largely because I graduated from Grade 12 in 1963, and read that famous book the following year. I am sure the Feminine Mystique changed my life.
Now this book, the one I am still reading, is chock-full of stuff I and all of us women went through, but that I had mostly forgotten about. At least I had forgotten about the many telling details that are contained in this book
The things that were expected of you, the things you were shut out of because you were a girl, the dashed hopes and dreams.
The structure of the book--four women's lives, four husbands, four marriages, all the children, four career trajectories--gives the author a big canvas for showcasing the many ways in which women's and girl's lives were circumscribed and damaged back then. And mens' lives too, in their fixed roles.
Definitely recommend, even if you don't normally choose popular fiction.
Continuation of this review:
And at page 240, that's when the story really picked up. Things started happening. It became more of a page turner than it had been.
If you are old enough to remember where you were and what you were doing in 1963, this is a good book for you.
Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom
By Thomas E. Ricks
Penguin Press New York 2017
This book is an engagingly written examination of the lives of two famous Englishmen—Winston Churchill and George Orwell—covering roughly the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The parallel that makes it worthwhile to consider these two men in a single volume is that both were unwavering in their desire to preserve the human rights of the individual person, which at the time were under threat from fascist totalitarian regimes on the right and communist totalitarian regimes on the left.
Both men had the rare genius of being able to inspire millions: Churchill through his magnificent oratory, and Orwell through his best-known fiction—1984 and Animal Farm.
To read this book is to become starkly aware that what is going on right now is stunningly similar to what was happening in Europe in the 1930s. Once again, we see a struggle for control of nations and of the world’s economy, led by people who seek coercive power—who view individual rights, human rights, as inconvenient obstacles to their drive to rule for their own benefit and the benefit of their particular gang. Yes, there are evil people who rise to power. They did so in the 1930s, and they are doing so now. And they carry on, weaving a fabric of lies and manipulation.
Ricks’ book examines the many layers of political energy in the United States and Great Britain during those three decades. Britain, with its entrenched class structure, was something of a caste society—possibly still is. The United States was then, and probably remains, a racialized society.
I was struck by the fact that the U.S., which has long presented itself as the great savior of Europe in defeating Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, sat back and allowed Britain—assisted largely only by “the Dominions” (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa)—to fight on alone through the grinding nightmare of the Battle of Britain and The Blitz in 1940 and 1941. Only when its own ox was gored—when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred—did the United States enter the war fully.
The parallel between America’s passivity during the Battle of Britain and the U.S. response to Ukraine being attacked and invaded by Russia seems unmistakable.
When is isolationism prudent, and when is it cowardice? There seems to be a profound reluctance to draw a line in the sand—to say to the aggressor, Oh no, you don’t.
We must also recognize that much of what passes for “history,” and much of what comes out of the mouths of “leaders,” is propaganda. To discern what is accurate and what is nonsense takes time—time to read deeply, to study history, and to learn how things really work and have worked. Most people are simply not inclined to do this. It is work.
The safest fallback, it seems, is to cling to democracy in all its details and institutions—to insist on, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, government of the people, by the people, for the people. When one compares the words of that address with the words coming from the current U.S. administration, it can feel as though a chasm has opened—as if there has been a derailment.
It is hard to watch.
Faithful Readers
