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Debut novel feels both timeless and very much of the zeitgeist
The Female Persuasion Meg Wolitzer Riverhead Books
In the first 15 pages of Meg Wolitzer’s new novel, a college student is groped against her will, setting in motion a life devoted to female empowerment. In the next 30 pages she meets the woman who inspires her to pursue that life. And in the more than 400 remaining pages of The Female Persuasion, Wolitzer tells a story about womanhood, ambition, ego and ideals.
Greer Kadetsky is the young woman in the opening chapter and the feminist icon she meets in a bathroom after a campus speech is named Faith Frank — “a couple steps down from Gloria Steinem,” as Wolitzer describes her. There’s also Frank’s benefactor and former lover, Emmett; Greer’s first love, Cory; and her best friend, Zee.
Each character gets chapters that go deep inside their heads. There’s a lot of inner monologue, sometimes to a fault. The issues are complex, certainly, but some readers may wish the characters would simply act rather than reading paragraphs about what might happen if they do.
Minor flaws aside, Wolitzer’s talent shines in lines that say more in a sentence than most writers do in paragraphs. “People’s marriages were like twoperson religious cults, impossible to understand,” thinks Cory as he cleans one of the houses his grieving mother used to maintain. Or from Faith’s head as she daydreams during a massage: “You never knew when you were lifting your child for the last time; it might seem like just a regular time, when it was taking place, but later, looking back, it would turn out to have been the last.”
There’s much more to admire here as the novel ponders friendship, love and parentchild relationships. But in the end, Wolitzer’s real gift to her readers is a story that feels both timeless and very much of the zeitgeist. Her characters spend a lot of time soul-searching about a woman’s obligation to other women. “People did what they could ... until they couldn’t do it anymore,” she writes. Wolitzer does plenty with this book and one can only hope her readers — of the male and female persuasion — will keep the conversation going after the last page.
While some may credit Wolitzer for being in touch with the zeitgeist, this reviewer — a middleaged man, to be clear — gets the impression she would certainly applaud the current focus on #MeToo and #TimesUp.