Wolitzer’s ‘Female Persuasion’ is Me Too timely
Wolitzer tackles feminism, friendship, loyalty and love amid campus sexual misconduct and the women’s empowerment movement.
Meg Wolitzer’s new novel, The Female
Persuasion (Riverhead, 454 pp., ★★★g), strikes at the third-rail topics of our times with the surety and sharpness of an arrow shot by an expert archer. The best-selling author of The Interestings tackles feminism, friendship, loyalty and love amid campus sexual misconduct and the women’s empowerment movement.
Smart-girl Greer Kadetsky got into Yale but is relegated to a lowly state school when her pothead parents neglect to return a crucial financial aid form. Greer is furious; her boyfriend, Cory, is accepted at Yale and Princeton but chooses Princeton so he will not be a constant reminder to Greer of her plight.
When feminist icon Faith Frank visits Ryland College, Greer and her pal Zee are among the worshipful in her thrall. The timid Greer finds her voice — a big theme of this book — to tell Faith about the college’s shrug of a response to a frat boy who is a serial abuser.
Faith acknowledges Greer’s pain and years later hires her for a new non-profit venture after her fusty feminist magazine, Bloomer, folds. Faith and Greer’s new outlet is Loci (pronounced Losigh), a women’s empowerment speaker series financed by Faith’s former lover, billionaire Emmett Shrader.
After an ambling start, author Wolitzer hits her pace when a horrific tragedy occurs. Wolitzer’s characters are so richly relatable that the loss of even a secondary one leaves the reader as thunderstruck as Cory is. Cory and the gender-fluid Zee are the best characters: fierce, forgiving and heroic.
Wolitzer’s social commentary can be as funny as it is queasily on target. Fearful of offending the great Faith Frank, vegetarian Greer chokes down grilled steak at an office barbecue. When the inevitable rift between mentor and mentee occurs, Greer fumes: “I even ate her meat! Repeatedly.”
Wolitzer offers readers a lot to chew on as she skewers the righteous and selfrighteous with humor and poignancy. But in the end her sharp observations soften. The things that incite our fury and ambition may seem overwhelming, but it’ll all work out in the end.