The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick 4

 

"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."

    -Helen Babcock, bookstore owner to Margaret

This was our Page Turners book club selection for October. I didn't like it at first but about halfway in I got to know the characters and could relate in some ways. I've rated in a 4.

In the 1960's Margaret Ryan, a Virginia housewife and mother, becomes interested in Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique and decides to invite 3 of her neighbors in Concordia to form a book club. Vivian Buschetti, Bitsy Cobb and Charlotte Gustafson agree to read the book and meet to discuss it. They soon decide to call themselves the Bettys.

Two of the women have marriage problems and all have dreams and ambitions deferred as a result of being a woman and particularly being married. Margaret wants to be a writer, Viv misses her time as a nurse during the war, Charlotte is an artist and Bitsy had wanted to become a vet. Friedan's book inspired them to try again to achieve their goals. I could identify with the women because when I went to college in the mid-60's, women were expected to get their MRS degree.

In "A Letter to Readers," the author explains which characters are fictional and which are historical figures, like Katherine Graham, the first female newspaper publisher (Washington Post) and First Lady Jackie Kennedy, who had been a journalist before marriage.

The quote above reminded me of how I have become so fond of historical fiction because you learn what people of a certain time may have been thinking and feeling.

I enjoyed the mention of book titles---all of which I've never read. I think after reading this book and seeing how it changed these women's lives, I might need to find The Feminine Mystique.