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Dec 31, 2009

David rated it:

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 More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Mar 16, 2009

Jackie rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 14, 2011

Carolyn rated it:

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 bri More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 25, 2011

Gretchen rated it:

While it isn't a bad book, I wasn't horribly impressed. The time line was confusing, since it was not told chronologically, and it involves 5 generations and includes 3 Dorothys. The women were those sorts you find in current literature whose characters seem to be round and unique, and yet they are of the same mold. I wouldn't rush to read it unless you need an injection of women's lib and you don't mind confusion. That said, it shouldn't be dismissed. It's unique and has some creative line More...

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Mar 02, 2011

Jan rated it:

Initially, when I finished reading this book, I had planned on giving it 3 stars. But since I wait to enter my books on Goodreads until the end of the month, a few weeks have passed since I finished it, and when I saw it on my list, I thought: "What book is THAT?"

I cannot in good conscience give 3 stars to a book that I can barely remember after 3 weeks.

Walbert's book tells the story of 4 generations of women from the same family, the progenitor of which is a woman More...

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Feb 14, 2011

Johnny rated it:

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 nam More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2011

Mariellen rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 05, 2011

Lucille rated it:

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 o More...

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Oct 31, 2010

Rachel rated it:

I've been interested in how the suffragettes managed to convince voters to give women the right to vote, partly because I hope some of their strategies might work to convince a tough audience to find just solutions of a number of social problems. Committing suicide for the cause, though, is not a strategy I would employ myself or recommend to others. For one of the main characters in this novel, her death by hunger strike doesn't seem to have much of an impact on the success of the movement al More...

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Aug 02, 2010

Kathleen added it

A Short History of Women, by Kate Walbert, Narrators: Nicola Barber, Ruth Moore, Kathleen McInerney, Eliza Foss, Paula Parker; produced by Highbridge Company, downloaded from audible.com.

A wonderful book spanning at least four generations of a family of women. Publisher’s note says it better than I can:
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 More...

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Mar 25, 2010

Barbara A rated it:

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 genera More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 08, 2010

Kerfe rated it:

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. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 18, 2010

Nick rated it:

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 str More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 17, 2010

Holly rated it:

Wow this book was a challenge to read. I had to be 100% focused the entire time to get through it. I found that it helped to take notes on how the characters connected with each other, small events that would help me remember their link. In the front there is a family tree that is helpful, but a few of the characters have the same names, as in common in families, which made it hard to keep everyone straight.

I love stories about families, and author Kate Walbert had a great concept. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 26, 2009

Karen rated it:

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

More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Aug 08, 2009

Mary rated it:

Initially, this book reminded me of every book I only read because it was assigned for school. Like medicine - good for you, but unpleasant. By the end, though, I liked it more and found a couple of characters sympathetic. It is a short book, but the history of women covers 5 generations, beginning with the original Dorothy, an educated - but not degreed - widowed, mother of a 13-year old daughter, Evelyn, and 10-year old son, James, who kills herself by hunger strike over the status (or lack th More...

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Jun 10, 2011

Caitlin added it

I 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 generation More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 04, 2011

Lianne added it

A collective biography that chronicles five generations of women in one family. The story begins in 1914 with Dorothy Trevor Townsend, a suffragette who embarks a hunger strike for the cause of votes for women taking it to the death. This uncompromising choice is visited on subsequent generations of women in her family who either react against her feminist stance, or reinvent it within the context of each generation.Evelyn is her daughter, who, after her mother's death is sent to a boarding scho More...

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Jul 12, 2011

Jane rated it:

A Short history of Women by Kate Walbert is a novel portraying women's role as represented by five generations of women in one family.

We meet Dorothy on her deathbed, a suffragette on a hunger strike in 1914 England. Her daughter, Evelyn later moves to the U.S., never marries and becomes a successful scientist. Granddaughter Dorothy, marries, has children, then in middle-age becomes a blogging anti-war protester. Caroline and Liz are the baby-boomer great-granddaughters. Dorothy or More...

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Feb 11, 2010

Pamela rated it:

A Short History of Women begins with: "Mum starved herself for suffrage, Grandmother claiming it was just like Mum to take a cause too far. Mum said she had no choice." This from the mouth of 13 year old Evelyn, daughter of Dorothy Trevor Townsend, a fictional heroine in the cause for women's suffrage in Britain at the turn of the 20th century. Dorothy's lack of choice, in Walbert's story, seems more personal than political. As dedicated as she was to the cause, it seems that the c More...

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Jan 16, 2010

Michael rated it:

All I learned from Walbert I already knew, that women are women and not much else can be generalized about them, but she writes so beautifully that I don't mind.

Notes:

These are nice hazy British memories of suffrage, gilded white starving lilies. Walbert has Pat Barker's sense of history, particularly minor, peripheral figures having social significance. These legacies are powe3rful and evident: perceptiveness, light seriousness, disregard for wealth, but not necessaril More...

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Dec 05, 2009

Grace rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 20, 2009

Jeff rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 31, 2011

Kathrina rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 04, 2010

Felice rated it:

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 li More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 30, 2009

Susann rated it:

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 tha More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 14, 2011

Mr. Woodnal rated it:

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 nam More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 10, 2010

R. rated it:

A Short History of Women feels like a compilation of short stories and vignettes that manages to weave an overarching narrative around four generation of women beginning with Dorothy Townshed who died as a hunger striker fighting for female suffrage in England at the beginning of the 20th C. I normally am drawn to much longer books that focus on the development of a small group of characters and oftentimes find shorter books less fulfilling. Similar to Dara Horns "The World to Come" More...

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Feb 23, 2010

Anita rated it:

This book advertised itself as following a few generations of women. It really focused on one with glimmers into the other lives (I felt). Ok, maybe one and a half. I wanted to really like this book but felt the writing was disjointed and didn't flow at times. So, while I would say, go get it from the library, read it--see the changes in women's lives over generations. I'd also say, it won't be an easy read. However, there were some memorable parts and pieces. and I did like it enough to More...

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Oct 23, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

This book felt like something I should be reading in a college English class. If I didn't read it in big chunks, I got so lost I couldn't follow the story. I really enjoy books that jump around in time with different characters, but I struggled with this one because the characters all had the same (slightly altered) name. I was very thankful for the character map at the front of the book.
Once I got past my confusion, though, I enjoyed this book. I intrigued by the idea of how the great More...

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