The Crest of a Wave
As the women’s movement gathers momentum, Meg Wolitzer’s latest novel chimes with the mounting clamour for equality. By Erica Wagner
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 new novel, The Female Persuasion. Its protagonist is Greer Kadetsky, in college when the story starts in 2006; a 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. 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 long time. It’s landing at this weird, heated moment; 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 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. The cinematic adaptation was a hit at the Toronto Film Festival. 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 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 relationship 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 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?’” In turn, Wolitzer speaks of the importance of the people who give us permission. 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. “Why do they get that role?”
It’s exactly the right question: And not one that had 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. 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? How did they get that way? How did I get that way? Especially in the moment of the 24hour news cycle when things scroll by so fast—I want to take that scroll and look at it over a long period 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 a gripping novel that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the page. ■ The Female Persuasion is available at Books Kinokuniya. The Wife opens here in Singapore on 6 September.