Caryl Rivers has been called “one of the brightest voices in contemporary fiction.” Her novel VIRGINS was an international critical success, published in the US, UK, Sweden, Germany and Japan. It was on many best seller lists and in paperback (Pocket Books) sold more than a million copies. Her novels deal with American women trying to find a foothold in a rapidly changing world.
She is a nationally known author, journalist, media critic and professor of Journalism at Boston University. In 2007 She was awarded the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for distinguished journalism. She is the author of four novels and four works of non-fiction, all critically acclaimed. Her books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Troll Book club. With her late husband, Boston Globe columnist Alan Lupo, she penned a funny account of modern parenting, “For Better, For Worse.”
“Reading this book is like multiplying Woody Allen by two. Marriage isn’t supposed to be this funny.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer, on “For Better, For Worse”
Her articles have appeared in the New York Times magazine, Daily Beast, Huffington post, Salon, The Nation, Saturday Review, Ms., Mother Jones, Dissent, McCalls, Glamour, Redbook, Rolling Stone, Ladies Home Journal and many others. She writes frequent commentary for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and Womensenews. Of Her book “Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women” Gloria Steinem says it “will save the sanity of media watchers enraged or bewildered by the distance between image and reality.”
She has co-authored four books with Dr. Rosalind Barnett, senior scientist at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis—the latest (2011) being “The Truth About Girls and Boys: Confronting Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children.” Articles based on the book won a Casey medal for distinguished journalism about children and families and a special citation from the National Education Writers association. The Editorial Board of the Boston Globe voted their book “Same Difference” one of the best books of the year in 2004. The New York Times called their book “She Works, He Works” a bold new framing of the story of the American family, and praised its lucid prose. The Sloan Foundation cited their book “Lifeprints” as a “classic book” from the work-family canon that has made “a significant contribution and stood the test of time.”
Caryl Rivers also wrote THE CHEATS, an ABC afterschool special about the lives of high school seniors embroiled in a cheating scandal. It won the AFTRA American scene award for its treatment of minority characters. She also wrote A MATTER OF PRINCIPAL, syndicated by Hearst television, a drama about an urban school principal starring Loretta Swit. The drama won the prestigious GABRIEL award in l990 as the best locally produced television program in the U.S. Ms. Rivers was creative consultant for JENNY’S SONG, the first made for television drama to be syndicated nationally by Westinghouse television, starring Ben Vereen and Jessica Walter.
The girls from the Catholic school in "Virgins" are back and a bit older. I read this quite a long time ago but I recall it being a bit light in comparison to the hilarity of the first book.
Two best friends from high school, Peggy Morrison and Constance Masters, reunite in Washington and continue their indecent behavior. One becomes a Capitol Hill gossip columnist and the other is a prize-winning journalist to which they exploit their feminine wiles to get what they want. Sean McCaffrey, now a priest, continues to struggle as he did in his younger years. You can only do so many push-ups Sean!
I enjoyed this one, but not as much as the prequel Virgins. It just didn't seem to have the same pizazz.
In this sequel to Virgins, Peg is now a journalist. Having just finished a stint as a foreign correspondent, she is now assigned to Washington. Constance, with 2 kids and still married to Lee, is also getting back into journalism as a "gossip" columnist. Father Sean is a priest at a rectory in Baltimore. Peg returns to him having just lost a fiance, a photographer killed in front of her by mortar fire. With some trepidation, Peg and Sean begin a physical relationship, no longer able to sublimate their forbidden passion. In addition, with Peg's political connections, Sean gains a powerful ally that will help with his ambitions to block construction of a highway. Everything seems to be working out for the best. But attitudes change when Sean's brother, Bill, commits suicide and Peg becomes pregnant.
The change in tone from the prequel, Virgins, to this book is masterful because it really reflects in tone the time-skip the author employs here- it actually skips from a book about and for teens, to a book about and for adults- while retaining authentic cores of the main characters. Just like Virgins, equal parts funny and poignant, but because its not the 'amped on steroids, high blast' experience of emotion that a teenager experiences, the highs are more mellow than manic and the lows... are quite low. But the ending is the sweet conclusion these characters have always deserved.
I feel silly adding this one, but it's one of those books that creeps back into my memory every once in a while. I read it as a middle schooler, and felt like it was a really accurate portrayal of my adolescent confusion. Probably not great for adults, but teenage girls, sure :)
The natural follow through to Virgins, I liked this one nearly as much, although the power-success rah components brought it down maybe slightly. Still, it wraps up the story well, with the ending we all hoped for but didn't get with Virgins. That's both good and bad. :)