The Book Club for Troublesome Women

by Marie Bostwick

“Books sprung from an author’s imagination can be just as meaningful as those based on facts, figures, and events, or even more meaningful. Novels force you to think—to make your own conclusions about characters and themes, and decide if they’re valid or relevant or true or good, or the opposite, or maybe somewhere in between. My personal preference is for in between. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who was all one thing or the other, have you? Most people are a walking bundle of contradictions.”

Since the day she was born, her family, teachers, psychiatrists, the magazines she reads, and the whole of society have been sending the message that something is wrong with her, that the things making her unique—intelligence, stubbornness, creativity, and drive—are really neuroses that make her sick and unfeminine, even unlovable.

If women stuck up for one another the way men do, this would be a very different world.”