THE CREST OF A WAVE

A new novel for the days of #MeToo

As the women’s movement gathers momentum, Meg Wolitzer’s latest novel

chimes with the mounting clamour for equality

Novels take years to write; authors can’t plan when a book might make its debut. Yet sometimes one appears at the perfect moment. Such is the case with Meg Wolitzer’s wonderful new novel, The Female Persuasion. Its protagonist is Greer Kadetsky, in college when the story starts in 2006; a wholly believable young woman searching for her life’s direction. She finds it when she meets Faith Frank, a glamorous second-wave feminist in the Gloria Steinem mould, never seen without her signature high suede boots. Greer is captivated, and her encounter with Faith will shape her life, her friendships, her relationships – right up until ‘the unspeakable end’, the narrative time bomb that Wolitzer skilfully plants on the novel’s second page. With its focus on feminism – and how feminism affects different generations of women – could there be a better story for 2018?

Wolitzer admits that her timing is pretty good. But, she says, ‘these are issues that you and I and all the people we know have been thinking about for a really long time. It’s definitely landing at this weird, heated moment for sure; but these thoughts have been percolating inside me for a long time.’

Of course they have: for Wolitzer is the acclaimed author of The Wife, a sly, riveting story about the spouse of a famous American writer. Published 15 years ago, it was her breakout novel, a compelling examination of what used to be called the battle of the sexes. Last year the cinematic adaptation, directed by Björn Runge and starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce, was a hit at the Toronto Film Festival: it opens here in September. Wolitzer speaks with wonder of attending the screening; the theatre, she said, ‘held a zillion people’ and the film got a standing ovation. ‘There was such excitement and affection for Glenn Close’s performance,’ she says.

Wolitzer has been publishing novels since she was in her 20s; she knows her craft inside out. Much of our conversation centres on the way in which young women – like Greer – find mentors, and navigate that amazing, problematic relationship. Her own mother is the novelist Hilma Wolitzer (now 88), who was an enormous early influence on Meg’s ideas about what it was possible to do in the world. ‘Her first book was published when she was 44,’ she says. ‘She was a late bloomer. But she never said to me, “I’m worried about you trying to do this”; she said, “Try it, try it.” The world will whittle your daughter down but a mother never should.’

Later in her life, she developed a profound friendship with the late writer Nora Ephron, who with her sister Delia adapted Wolitzer’s 1988 novel This Is My Life for the screen. Wolitzer, in speaking of her,

catches exactly what an influential friendship can truly mean. ‘To have the attention of someone you admire is an extraordinary feeling,’ she says, ‘but it’s more than a feeling; it’s not like having the scruff of your neck rubbed. It’s about making you want to do more. Nora was someone who made a lot of people want to do good work. She wanted to make time to have good conversations with people she wanted to see. To be invited into that conversation meant you thought, “Wait a minute, does this mean I have something to say?”’

The film got mixed reviews when it appeared, but has found an enduring audience and some discerning admirers, Lena Dunham included. Wolitzer and Dunham met when the latter chose the film for a series she curated at the Brooklyn Academy of Music a few years ago. Ephron also had a huge effect on Dunham. ‘Lena was so gracious and wonderful when I met her,’ says Wolitzer. ‘She was a real fan of the movie and I think of the book too.’ As it happens, Dunham reviewed The Female Persuasion for The New York Times, writing that ‘Wolitzer is an infinitely capable creator of human identities that are as real as the type on this page, and her love of her characters shines more brightly than any agenda’.

In turn, Wolitzer speaks of the importance of the people ‘who give us permission – a friend of mine calls them “permissionaries”’. It’s the role Faith plays for Greer in The Female Persuasion; but it’s not one without its difficulties. ‘So, who gave them permission?’ Wolitzer asks. ‘That’s a good question. Why do they get that role?’

It’s exactly the right question: and yet not one that had ever occurred to me before. ‘Fiction is a place to explore the shocks and flights of our lives,’ Wolitzer says. ‘If you live long enough you see so much – sometimes things you think you can’t manage. And in fiction they pass through a kind of sieve, which is the consciousness of a character. Don’t you want to know who that other person is? Why are they annoying you the way they are? How did they get that way? How did I get that way? Especially in this moment of the 24-hour news cycle when things scroll by so fast – I want to take that scroll and look at it over a long period of time and see why it’s there.’

Wolitzer is as funny and charming as her books; but like her novels, she is also serious and thoughtful. The Female Persuasion is the perfect companion for your summer: a gripping novel that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page.

‘The Female Persuasion’ (£16.99, Chatto & Windus) is published on 7 June. ‘The Wife’ opens in UK cinemas on 28 September.