Pretty Furious

Pretty Furious / E.K. Johnston
NY: Dutton Books, c2024.
206 p.

I read this novel by a local author a little while back, and reviewed it for my library. But it was a good one and I wanted to share it with readers here as well! It's the story of five young women who decide they're not putting up with crap anymore ;)

Maddie, Mags, Louise, Jenny and Jen have been best friends for years. But they are noticing that their small town of Eganston, Ontario, has some issues with hypocrisy.

 It started with Amelia Chaser. She is 18 and pregnant, and judged harshly when she decides to get an abortion. Maddie notices that there is no disapproval or gossip about the boy involved, although it's not like Amelia got herself pregnant. But it’s Maddie's 17th birthday, and she makes a birthday wish for payback for Amelia.

 Their small rebellion succeeds: as the girls note, they are "good girls", they follow all the rules. No-one would suspect them of anything. And they decide to use this double standard to their advantage. 

 That year, each of them makes a wish as they turn 18, for something that fights back against the mistreatment of girls and women. Ranging from simple to complex, they come up with plots to punish the perpetrators of unjust behaviours. 

 Maddie's last wish, as she turns 18, is more significant and tied to the first one that starts the book. And it will be the last, as the girls will soon be leaving town for their lives in university and beyond, breaking up this group of five. 

 This is a story of revenge served cold, some pretty karmic results, and reflections on the social expectations of girls to be "good girls" even while holding them to standards that are not applied to anyone else. Entertaining and thoughtful, this story of friendship and just desserts brings up many issues that may get people talking.

Kim Jiyoung, born 1982

 

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 / Cho Nam-Joo
trans. from the Korean by Jamie Chang
Toronto: Anansi, 2020, c2016.
163 p.

Another book that examines the constraints on a woman's life, and in this case the effects on one particular woman. This Korean novel looks at Kim Jiyoung's life, and reveals her breakdown in the face of extreme societal misogyny. 

She's a thirty something office worker who leaves her job to care for her first child, but begins to exhibit strange symptoms; she is taking on the identities of other women, alive and dead, as she struggles to find a way to live. Her husband, who thinks she should be happy to give up her career and identity in order to stay home and care for him and their child, becomes alarmed and sends her to a psychiatrist - male of course. 

The novel is told is a spare and minimalist voice, that of the psychiatrist giving a report. This distancing from Jiyoung's own voice and own perspective just reinforces the complete societal blindness to the issues Korean women are facing. When as a young woman she was harassed, her father blamed her for being out at night. When coworkers shared pictures online from a hidden camera in the women's washrooms, they were not held responsible, the women just had to accept it. There's a litany of misogyny, from childhood when boys always go first at everything, from school grades to eating, to work where women are not recruited for good positions even if they have earned the highest grades in university, and even if they do find a job they are paid much less than men.

It's the accumulation of these many systematic misogynistic injuries that means "Jiyoung was standing in the middle of a labyrinth. Conscientiously and calmly, she was searching for a way out that didn’t exist to begin with." This is what is fueling her so-called madness, which in a stroke of brilliance is mansplained away by the male psychiatrist in the end. 

The cold and clinical tone, alongside the factoids thrown in, make this novel a bit of a fiction/nonfiction composite. But it really works as a novel, as we follow Jiyoung and become invested in her life and her experiences. I don't think there will be many women readers who can't understand her distress and resonate with her desire to escape this life. I found it really powerful, especially alongside the previous book I just reviewed, Invisible Women. We can't just look away. 

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

 

Invisible Women / Caroline Criado Perez
NY: Abrams, 2019.
411 p.

During this month of International Women's Day, I wanted to get at least one relevant review in. And this one is certainly on topic! I started this book and had to read it in installments -- I was getting so angry by the end of each chapter that I had to take a break. 

It's a a fantastic read about ways that invisible and unexamined bias shapes daily life for women in a multitude of ways. From drug trials to urban planning, safety tests to voice recognition software, everything is designed with men in mind. It's not even that there is malicious intent as much as a choice not to consider the needs of half the population, which are different that "how it's always been done". And the author points out that there are simply gaps in the data -- the studies haven't been done, or tests made, which include women's experience. And even when there IS data it is ignored or just waved away as too niche. 

This is a book that everyone should read. It's so enlightening, and gives facts on a variety of topics - one that really stuck with me as something I'd never considered before was the idea of urban planning. She uses examples from South America to show that when communities are moved to "better" areas, these are not designed with the lifestyles of the people involved in mind. Moving from a crowded community to pristinely designed apartment blocks affected the lives of many women in a South American urban experiment - it meant they were so far away by transit from the jobs they needed to go to that children couldn't be looked after. And the neighbours who often took on these parenting duties were no longer right next door. So many ripples there. 

Another example is simply the way most public transit is designed, to move out from a central radius. This works if you are just going TO work and back TO home with no stops in between. But women make up the majority of transit users and they travel very differently, having multiple chores and duties to stop and go for. So this system adds expense and lots of extra time to their days. 

There are so many more examples here of ways that women's experiences and needs are overlooked in every area of life. Take a breather while reading or listening to this book or you will either get super depressed or unbelievably angry. The good thing is that the final chapter encourages women to get involved in decision making anywhere they can. And you can sign up for the Invisible Women newsletter on her website if you want further updates. A must read but be gentle with yourself while reading! 

Maresi

 

Maresi / Maria Turtschaninoff;
trans. from the Finnish by Annie Prime
NY: Abrams, 2017, c2014.
246 p.

Now for another, quite different novel! In a creative feminist fantasy, this takes an island abbey of women as its setting. We have young teens as the protagonists, and a sense of the dark/middle ages as a time period at the beginning, shading over into a Cretan myth as the story progresses.

Maresi is a young girl brought to the island by her father during the hungry years. He doesn't want to see his daughter go, but it's her best chance at survival. After some rocky adjustment, she settles into life at the Red Abbey, learning history, plant lore, magic, life skills of all kinds, and how to make friendships and live with others. Then a young girl appears on the island, ragged and with a scarred back. She's escaping from men who will not give up on trying to get her back. 

Maresi befriends her, and we slowly learn her horrific backstory, full of patriarchal abuse and the murder of her sister, which pushed her to escape. Meanwhile, Maresi is feeling the call of one of the goddesses to pursue her learning in a particular direction, one which she doesn't really want. Her struggle to reconcile her own calling with what she thinks she wants is powerful and relatable.  

The conclusion of the story is harrowing, with drama, violence and a full visitation of the triple goddess, who wants her Abbey to survive. This is an innovative story, full of female experiences and no time for patriarchal excuses. It's a wonderfully drawn narrative, with strong and complex characters, plenty of myth and magic in its fabulous setting, and a driving plot that seems inescapable. 

With strong women running this show, there are lots of characters to engage with, and many serious issues to think about. Part One in a trilogy, this starts strong and makes you want book 2 asap! A translation from Finnish, this is a great discovery.

Outlawed

 

Outlawed / Anna North
NY: Bloomsbury, c2021.
272 p.

Now this was a different book than I'd expected -- it's not just a modern, feminist Western, it's also a kind of retroactive post-apocalyptic novel. How can one explain this? Once you get your head around it, it's simple. But like I said, unexpected... somehow I'd missed that part. 

Ada is married at 17, happily and expecting a great future. But after a year of marriage and no children in sight, her husband (and especially her mother-in-law) decides that she's barren and so they cast her out. In Ada's world, a world of 1894 in the west of what used to be the United States of America, before the Great Flu that killed most of the population, children are the reason for existence. Barren women are considered curses and driven from their towns so that they won't cause other women's pregnancies to fail, or deformed children to be born. If they're not chased away, they are hung as witches or abnormalities.

Ada's mother is the local midwife, but even all her help in delivering others' babies can't help Ada now. She flees to a convent that takes in women like her. Discovering that she's not really cut out for the nun life, the Mother Superior recommends Ada head out to find the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a refuge for women like her, led by The Kid

And so Ada does, and as she opens her story, "In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.".

The story is rooted in the idea of women and fertility, and the control of fertility. When this is added to the Western tropes, this story feels like it could only be American. There is an atmosphere of fear and small mindedness, suspicion and superstition, and these women who don't fit in are having to carve their own living space out in whatever way they can. The way forward is community and education, timely thoughts for today as well. 

I liked this book; the world created was convincing, and the characters were all unique -- there were really strong individuals found here. I thought the combination of the Western with the "women's apocalypse" themes worked well, and had lots of room to expand. But I didn't absolutely love it, and I think that might be because it's really quite short, and the ending feels a bit sudden to me. There was so much more room to really go into some of the themes and conundrums the author set up, which were left open-ended and not taken to their full potential. I feel that with more context to the book there would be so much more to discuss. It feels a bit like the author is revealing situations but not taking a position or showing an opinion on them; it's not often I think that a book needs more writing, but in this one I think it could have fleshed it out some more, given it more heft. 

Still, it was thought-provoking and should stimulate discussion if read in a book club, for example. I can think of many partner reads to this one, like The Outcasts by Kathleen Kent, if you like the women in the west themes, or Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich, if you're more drawn to the apocalyptic fertility themes. 

The Once and Future Witches

The Once and Future Witches / Alix E. Harrow

NY: Redhook, c2020

516 p.

I really loved Harrow's first book (The Ten Thousand Doors of January) so snapped this one up when it came out. An author I liked, witchy suffragettes and three sisters as main characters-- so many of my favourite things! 

I liked this book. Didn't quite love it as much as the first one, but still really enjoyed the creation of this alternate past when women had magical gifts that were suppressed and needed to be restored to the world -- enter the Eastwood sisters, Belladonna, Amaranth & Juniper. These three are quite different from one another, and they are slightly estranged due to their traumatic upbringing. 

But as Juniper finds her older sisters, and begins to fight for both votes and magic, they must come together to save women's magic in the world. I really liked the prickly relationships between these sisters, and the way their individual preoccupations built a complete story. They are each quite different -- bookish, maternal, or completely wild. But they each have magic in their blood, and discover its importance while also discovering that their kind of magic isn't the only kind there is. 

The story includes a nod to other communities outside of the sisters' world. Belladonna begins a relationship with Cleo, a black journalist with a different magical tradition. The women in her family and community are clearly acknowledged, and come to save the day a time or two. There are also a couple of sympathetic male characters, although there are a heck of a lot more awful ones. It really expanded the story to have other communities acknowledged, even though the Eastwood quest was clearly the central theme and focus. 

The story started out really strongly, lots of energy and power -- the middle was a bit more of the explanatory background and strategizing part, so a bit slower -- and then the ending features the big showdown between the Eastwoods and the vile politician trying to eradicate women's magic forever. Unfortunately, the ending really annoyed me, and diminished my appreciation for the story. It didn't seem to match the sentiments of the rest of the book, with women standing up and claiming their witchy heritage -- it fell to the cliché of a witch's end.  

But the characters were wonderful, and the combination of women's rights, folklore, and fairy tale characters and elements was beautifully done. Looking forward to Harrow's next book! 

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower /
Brittney Cooper
NY: St. Martin's, c2018
288 p.

This is one of the books by Black women that I found in my library last month, and I really, really liked it. Brittney Cooper is indeed eloquent, and lets the rage fly. I learned so much. 

The book is a set of personal essays, ranging between topics like sexuality, anger, women's friendships, respectability politics, exceptionalism, religion, and more. In every essay, black women's lives are centred. As the book's blurb says, 

Far too often, Black women’s anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that. 

She certainly does. She is both justifiably angry about a lot, and extremely eloquent. It was a pleasure to listen to this on audiobook and hear her arguments and reasoning about so many things. I appreciated having to move out of the way as not the intended audience for once, which I usually am as a white middle aged female reader, and listening to her words that are completely and thoroughly based in black women's lives. 

I found her powerful in her analysis and pointing out of social absurdities, and also often very funny. Her intelligent sarcasm was refreshing and the kind of conversation I can really engage with. There were experiences she discussed, especially those of a good girl growing up in the church, that I really resonated with myself, and recognized issues that resulted from that upbringing. This isn't a churchy book, though; there's lots of swearing, discussion of sex, women's desire, and the not so great aspects of religion, even while she recognizes faith as an important element of her life. I love the way that everything is there, and not siloed off into separate things that pretend not to co-exist. 

This was both a purely enlightening and enjoyable book. Maybe not enjoyable in terms of the subject matter, when she's bringing up racism, sexism, daily microaggressions, and oppressive history, but in the way she talks about it, shines light on it, and leaves the reader with a sense of her power and personal presence in it all. A great read. 

The Mental Load

The Mental Load / Emma; 
trans. from the French by Una Dimitrijevic
Seven Stories Press, c2018.
224 p.

I had this book on hold for a while at my library and it just came in this week. I didn't realize that it was originally French & had been translated. Perfect for Women in Translation month -- written and translated by a woman, and all about women's lives in our world. 

It's made up of a series of comics that a writer known only as Emma has been writing and sharing online for a while. The title story, The Mental Load, went viral and catapulted her and feminist thought about women's labour into everyday discussions. You can read the complete title piece, and probably the best known of all her work, over at her own blog. It gives a clear sense of her writing and drawing style, and the pedagogical tone that is consistent throughout the book.

I found that it was also the strongest piece in the book. There are others about topics like universal income, women's sexual health, domestic violence, birthing and motherhood and maternity leave, and a fable about a woman's right to cover up or reveal her body and how that's socially controlled. 

I enjoyed this book, and found lots in it to think about. But it's probably best as an intro to these topics for people who haven't engaged with them a lot, as they're very introductory and top-level. It would be an excellent first-year reader at college, for example. What I think is the strongest element of them is the way that Emma can talk about serious issues facing women today without being confrontational in a way that cuts off discussion; rather, she seems to invite conversation with her work, without watering down her feminist message. 

That's quite a skillful balance and I found this book engaging. You can find more by and about her at her blog, also simply called Emma.