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The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke
Nineteen-year-old summer intern Bronwen McCuddhy must prove herself worthy to join a team probing the deep mysteries of genetics- in spite of an unexpected telegram with news of a family tragedy that makes her question who she really is and what she wants from life. Her sense of humor and her secret weapon- the writings of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke- are the keys to her survival of that fateful, not quite typically American summer.
212 pages, Paperback
First published March 12, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 14, 2024
Barbara Riddle’s 2013 novel The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the summer of 1963, which was not only a seminal period for its protagonist, 19- year-old Bronwen, but for the entire nation as well. While Bronwen pursues both her unrequited love for her boyfriend and her passion for science as an assistant in a Harvard chemistry laboratory under the guidance of a dysfunctional doctoral candidate dealing with his own demons, the country is in the midst of a civil rights crisis, facing a growing communist insurgency in South Viet Nam, witnessing the birth of the feminist movement, and within a few months, reeling from President John Kennedy’s assassination.
Like most young women attracted to the sciences in the sixties, Bronwen faces her share of discrimination in a field traditionally dominated by males. While attending a scientific conference, she observes: “The rating system broke down completely, however, when it came to females: there were so few that almost all the ones who came to speak were outstanding. The terribly clever clumsy ones lived with their mothers, wore brown Oxfords with laces and very thick crepe soles, and no one judged or cared; the sexy ones proved they had a body as well as a mind by wearing heels and tight sweaters, and were the targets of the most aggressive questioning.”
The novel opens with a prologue that provides a glimpse into Bronwen’s state of mind and sets the stage for the coming months. From the time her plane departs Portland and lands in Boston, she has only one thought, to make love to her boyfriend, Eric. At the same time she justifies rushing into his bed, she reveals that Eric may not be as anxious to reunite as she is. “It was not a bad thing, not bad at all, to have finished her junior year at a tough college, to have a paying summer job at one of the best biochem labs on the East Coast, and to have a Harvard Junior Fellow awaiting her arrival. It wasn’t his fault if he was too busy to meet her at the airport.” Indeed, she is filled with self-doubt and anxiety about their relationship. In short, Eric makes her feel inadequate. “It was all starting to come back. The sensation of being watched, and judged. And found wanting. She would never be smart enough.”
But no matter how liberated she feels, or how ambitious she is, Bronwen is ahead of her time. Coming of age in the sixties puts her at a distinct disadvantage. The world is not yet ready for women’s equality. Yet, it is Bronwen’s determination to succeed, despite the odds against her, that makes Barbara Riddle’s novel such a wonderful read. Rather than focus on the troubling historic context surrounding her heroine, Riddle keeps her lens on Bronwen as she experiences her own transformation, while letting us see just enough to connect us to the past. One example is: “Her best present that year was a Brownie Hawkeye camera, nestled in its cardboard nest next to the flash attachment that came with it. The next day her father took her to the opening of the huge black and white photography exhibit called The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art uptown.” And this mention of another early icon of Americana: “One of its main virtues was its proximity to a new hamburger place called McDonald's, where you could get burgers for twenty-nine cents and salty shoestring fries for eleven.”
Riddle also heightens the tension within her story by deftly introducing a second point of view, that of Bronwen’s advisor, Felix. In fact, he inhabits the novels first two chapters where we learn that he is married to Paulette, a much smarter, more capable scientist who endures his absent minded professor persona, complete with its lack of personal hygiene and a penchant for donuts, perhaps only because she must, considering that she was born a woman. “For Felix, women and doughnuts were proof that some kind of benevolent intelligence was responsible for the universe as he knew it.”
As the story unfolds, it is clear that Bronwen’s relationship to Eric is troublesome. He comes across as talented, smart, arrogant, and when Bronwen least expects it, unfaithful. Unnerved by the revelation that Eric is not who she thought he was and the news that her father died, she visits her estranged mother in Greenwich Village, has a one night stand with dire consequences, and receives an unexpected declaration of love from the most unlikely of prospects.
The joy of Riddle’s novel lies in her empathetic and honest betrayal of its characters in a period fraught with revolutions of individual spirit and our collective national conscience. It is how Bronwen succeeds and ultimately triumphs that wins our love and respect. Whether readers are old enough to have lived through the sixties like Bronwen, or are experiencing that tumultuous decade vicariously, The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke, delivers.
Like most young women attracted to the sciences in the sixties, Bronwen faces her share of discrimination in a field traditionally dominated by males. While attending a scientific conference, she observes: “The rating system broke down completely, however, when it came to females: there were so few that almost all the ones who came to speak were outstanding. The terribly clever clumsy ones lived with their mothers, wore brown Oxfords with laces and very thick crepe soles, and no one judged or cared; the sexy ones proved they had a body as well as a mind by wearing heels and tight sweaters, and were the targets of the most aggressive questioning.”
The novel opens with a prologue that provides a glimpse into Bronwen’s state of mind and sets the stage for the coming months. From the time her plane departs Portland and lands in Boston, she has only one thought, to make love to her boyfriend, Eric. At the same time she justifies rushing into his bed, she reveals that Eric may not be as anxious to reunite as she is. “It was not a bad thing, not bad at all, to have finished her junior year at a tough college, to have a paying summer job at one of the best biochem labs on the East Coast, and to have a Harvard Junior Fellow awaiting her arrival. It wasn’t his fault if he was too busy to meet her at the airport.” Indeed, she is filled with self-doubt and anxiety about their relationship. In short, Eric makes her feel inadequate. “It was all starting to come back. The sensation of being watched, and judged. And found wanting. She would never be smart enough.”
But no matter how liberated she feels, or how ambitious she is, Bronwen is ahead of her time. Coming of age in the sixties puts her at a distinct disadvantage. The world is not yet ready for women’s equality. Yet, it is Bronwen’s determination to succeed, despite the odds against her, that makes Barbara Riddle’s novel such a wonderful read. Rather than focus on the troubling historic context surrounding her heroine, Riddle keeps her lens on Bronwen as she experiences her own transformation, while letting us see just enough to connect us to the past. One example is: “Her best present that year was a Brownie Hawkeye camera, nestled in its cardboard nest next to the flash attachment that came with it. The next day her father took her to the opening of the huge black and white photography exhibit called The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art uptown.” And this mention of another early icon of Americana: “One of its main virtues was its proximity to a new hamburger place called McDonald's, where you could get burgers for twenty-nine cents and salty shoestring fries for eleven.”
Riddle also heightens the tension within her story by deftly introducing a second point of view, that of Bronwen’s advisor, Felix. In fact, he inhabits the novels first two chapters where we learn that he is married to Paulette, a much smarter, more capable scientist who endures his absent minded professor persona, complete with its lack of personal hygiene and a penchant for donuts, perhaps only because she must, considering that she was born a woman. “For Felix, women and doughnuts were proof that some kind of benevolent intelligence was responsible for the universe as he knew it.”
As the story unfolds, it is clear that Bronwen’s relationship to Eric is troublesome. He comes across as talented, smart, arrogant, and when Bronwen least expects it, unfaithful. Unnerved by the revelation that Eric is not who she thought he was and the news that her father died, she visits her estranged mother in Greenwich Village, has a one night stand with dire consequences, and receives an unexpected declaration of love from the most unlikely of prospects.
The joy of Riddle’s novel lies in her empathetic and honest betrayal of its characters in a period fraught with revolutions of individual spirit and our collective national conscience. It is how Bronwen succeeds and ultimately triumphs that wins our love and respect. Whether readers are old enough to have lived through the sixties like Bronwen, or are experiencing that tumultuous decade vicariously, The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke, delivers.
June 10, 2023
Barbara Riddle's novel, "The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke" is set during the summer of 1963 in Portland,Oregon, New York City and the academic hotspots of Waltham & Cambridge, Massachusetts. The characters in this novel are coming-of-age during the escalation of the war in Vietnam and the expansion of the civil rights movement, during the beginning of the age of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. The popular music of the time, referred to by her characters, expresses their emotional conflicts about being in academia while the world is in such turmoil.
The novel's central theme is the coming-of-age story of Bronwen, a nineteen-year old college junior who is entering into a summer internship at a genetics research lab at a time when the role of women in the professional world was beginning to change from what it had been for previous generations. Two of the colleges that are part of the setting of the plot of her novel, although given fictional names, are most likely Reed College in Portland, Oregon and Brandeis University in Waltham. There are some amusing and revealing glimpses of undergraduate life during the '60s, including a drug trip scene involving the protégées of a Harvard professor who can only be Timothy Leary. There is also a darkly funny reverse Annie Hall scene in which the WASP-y Bronwen has dinner with the Lefty-intellectual parents of her Jewish boyfriend Eric, and she completely disgraces herself by feigning familiarity with the story of Sacco & Vanzetti.
While the theme of the coming-of age story is in many ways timeless, I particularly enjoyed reading this novel because the story of the main character in Barbara's novel portrays an image of the early 1960's that even those of us who came of age in the 80's and the 90's can relate to.
Becoming independent from parents and mentors and choosing one's own path is an individual task that every human being must wrestle with. And, as a man with many female friends who are pursuing professional careers, it is clear to me that a lot has changed for the better, but that perhaps some of the issues Barbara Riddle deals with are still ones that every young woman must solve for herself. Hopefully, society is making it a bit easier.
The novel's central theme is the coming-of-age story of Bronwen, a nineteen-year old college junior who is entering into a summer internship at a genetics research lab at a time when the role of women in the professional world was beginning to change from what it had been for previous generations. Two of the colleges that are part of the setting of the plot of her novel, although given fictional names, are most likely Reed College in Portland, Oregon and Brandeis University in Waltham. There are some amusing and revealing glimpses of undergraduate life during the '60s, including a drug trip scene involving the protégées of a Harvard professor who can only be Timothy Leary. There is also a darkly funny reverse Annie Hall scene in which the WASP-y Bronwen has dinner with the Lefty-intellectual parents of her Jewish boyfriend Eric, and she completely disgraces herself by feigning familiarity with the story of Sacco & Vanzetti.
While the theme of the coming-of age story is in many ways timeless, I particularly enjoyed reading this novel because the story of the main character in Barbara's novel portrays an image of the early 1960's that even those of us who came of age in the 80's and the 90's can relate to.
Becoming independent from parents and mentors and choosing one's own path is an individual task that every human being must wrestle with. And, as a man with many female friends who are pursuing professional careers, it is clear to me that a lot has changed for the better, but that perhaps some of the issues Barbara Riddle deals with are still ones that every young woman must solve for herself. Hopefully, society is making it a bit easier.
July 4, 2020
Back to the 60's. I got to like all the characters and it was fun to catch details of period and places that I happened to know.
January 3, 2014
Poised in a moment in time marked by change, Bronwen, age nineteen, is eager to begin a research summer job in Boston. And with the job comes a reunion with boyfriend Eric, a graduate student at Harvard. For the summer, they will be living in Eric's Cambridge flat.
The 60s had brought remarkable opportunities for young women. At any other time in history, could a young woman have obtained an internship with a Harvard Junior Fellow? Before Betty Friedan's book hit the stores, had women ever realized all of the possibilities available to them?
But Bronwen is in a state of conflict, too. She is ready for love, but she also wants her life as a scientist.
Over the next few weeks, we watch as she deals with the conflicts in her life, including a less-than-attentive boyfriend, another possible love interest, and her life of commitment to her work. Just as she is ready to complete her summer, sad news erupts. And shortly afterward, she is forced to face another obstacle to her goals.
I enjoyed engaging with this young woman as she confronted her personal and work issues. I liked how she protected herself with her Rilke collection, for as much as she loved science, a part of her clung to another kind of inner life:
"Zipping up her Army surplus parka, she bent her head into the late afternoon breeze. In the pouch-like pocket of her jacket, next to the letter, she felt for the presence of her trusty ubiquitous Rilke volume, her shield against unwanted dinner conversation...."
"The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke" took me back to my own younger days, when I, too, had to consider my options and make choices. Sometimes impossible choices. 4 stars.
The 60s had brought remarkable opportunities for young women. At any other time in history, could a young woman have obtained an internship with a Harvard Junior Fellow? Before Betty Friedan's book hit the stores, had women ever realized all of the possibilities available to them?
But Bronwen is in a state of conflict, too. She is ready for love, but she also wants her life as a scientist.
Over the next few weeks, we watch as she deals with the conflicts in her life, including a less-than-attentive boyfriend, another possible love interest, and her life of commitment to her work. Just as she is ready to complete her summer, sad news erupts. And shortly afterward, she is forced to face another obstacle to her goals.
I enjoyed engaging with this young woman as she confronted her personal and work issues. I liked how she protected herself with her Rilke collection, for as much as she loved science, a part of her clung to another kind of inner life:
"Zipping up her Army surplus parka, she bent her head into the late afternoon breeze. In the pouch-like pocket of her jacket, next to the letter, she felt for the presence of her trusty ubiquitous Rilke volume, her shield against unwanted dinner conversation...."
"The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke" took me back to my own younger days, when I, too, had to consider my options and make choices. Sometimes impossible choices. 4 stars.
December 28, 2016
"“The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke"” by Barbara Riddle is a well-written novel that tells the story from the 60-ies of, about the time that although not so long ago, in many ways was different from the world we'’re living in.
In her novel author introduce one female science student named Bronwen who works in a Harvard lab. Due to her life inexperience she will make a huge mistake and jeopardize her entire career that in those years in the scientific community was already difficult to achieve if you were a woman.
Barbara Riddle wrote an exceptional novel about the difficulties one young woman will pass to enter almost completely male scientific community of the post-war America.
The author skillfully describes this woman internship full of obstacles she will need to avoid on her way to the finish line from which she will emerge stronger and smarter.
Bronwen is believable character, smart, humorous and full of life but as all young people prone to making the wrong decisions, which are often direct life in one-way street.
The characters with which Bronwen will interact are brilliant in their diversity, and no matter how much we liked or despised them for their actions, they'’re all excellently characterized from the pen of this author.
And this is just one of the reasons why this novel about a courageous and persistent young woman who was living and struggling in times when you had to be brave if you wanted to succeed as a woman, is worth reading.
In her novel author introduce one female science student named Bronwen who works in a Harvard lab. Due to her life inexperience she will make a huge mistake and jeopardize her entire career that in those years in the scientific community was already difficult to achieve if you were a woman.
Barbara Riddle wrote an exceptional novel about the difficulties one young woman will pass to enter almost completely male scientific community of the post-war America.
The author skillfully describes this woman internship full of obstacles she will need to avoid on her way to the finish line from which she will emerge stronger and smarter.
Bronwen is believable character, smart, humorous and full of life but as all young people prone to making the wrong decisions, which are often direct life in one-way street.
The characters with which Bronwen will interact are brilliant in their diversity, and no matter how much we liked or despised them for their actions, they'’re all excellently characterized from the pen of this author.
And this is just one of the reasons why this novel about a courageous and persistent young woman who was living and struggling in times when you had to be brave if you wanted to succeed as a woman, is worth reading.
December 9, 2013
Every once in a while the author of ‘The
Girl Pretending to Read Rilke’ stopped me in mid-sentence. Sometimes it was an eerily accurate description (of an army-surplus store, for example: ‘smells of slightly moldy canvass duffel bags and new cotton’). Sometimes it was an observation of an obscure emotional state easily overlooked. Sometimes it was a laugh out loud scene. Usually, it was a moment of recognition. Things I’ve experienced but not thought about in decades, if at all. Those are the things that make good fiction writing.
This novel is about a female science student working in a lab at Harvard in the summer of 1963. She is gifted, but diffident at the beginning of a tumultuous summer and by the end of the story she is much wiser. The author, Barbara Riddle, manages to provide enough specifics about that time and place without making the book limiting. I attended college at the opposite end of the same decade and I was a social science major. Still, so much of the heroine’s experience was familiar to me and to anyone coming-of-age. The story develops easily—I finished the book in two enjoyable sessions. The writing is flawless and never gets in the reader’s way.
Girl Pretending to Read Rilke’ stopped me in mid-sentence. Sometimes it was an eerily accurate description (of an army-surplus store, for example: ‘smells of slightly moldy canvass duffel bags and new cotton’). Sometimes it was an observation of an obscure emotional state easily overlooked. Sometimes it was a laugh out loud scene. Usually, it was a moment of recognition. Things I’ve experienced but not thought about in decades, if at all. Those are the things that make good fiction writing.
This novel is about a female science student working in a lab at Harvard in the summer of 1963. She is gifted, but diffident at the beginning of a tumultuous summer and by the end of the story she is much wiser. The author, Barbara Riddle, manages to provide enough specifics about that time and place without making the book limiting. I attended college at the opposite end of the same decade and I was a social science major. Still, so much of the heroine’s experience was familiar to me and to anyone coming-of-age. The story develops easily—I finished the book in two enjoyable sessions. The writing is flawless and never gets in the reader’s way.
June 17, 2016
This first novel deals with a young woman coming of age in the 1960s, struggling to find her place as a woman in the world of science and understand her emotions. The protagonist uses "pretending to read Rilke," as a defensive shield to avoid interacting with people around her. I enjoyed reading this and hope Barbara Riddle writes more.
July 11, 2016
Beautifully written!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews