books
a short history of women
national book award finalist kate walberts a short history of women is a profoundly moving portrayal of the complicated legacies of mothers and daughters chronicling five generations of women from the close of the nineteenth century through the early years of the twenty first . p the novel opens in england in 1914 at the deathbed of dorothy townsend a suffragette who starves herself for the cause . her choice echoes in the stories of her descendants interwoven throughout a brilliant daughter who tries to escape the burden of her mothers infamy by immigrating to america just after world war i to begin a career in science ; a niece who chooses a conventional path marriage children suburban domesticity only to find herself disillusioned with her husband of fifty years and engaged in heartbreaking and futile antiwar protests ; a great granddaughter who wryly articulates the free floating anxiety of the times while getting drunk on a childrens playdate in post 9 11 manhattan . in a kaleidoscope of voices and with a richness of imagery emotion and wit walbert portrays the ways in which successive generations of women have responded to what the victorians called the woman question . p as she did in her critically acclaimed the gardens of kyoto and our kind walbert induces a state in which the past seems to hang effortlessly amid the present the new york times . a short history of women is her most ambitious novel a thought provoking and vividly original narrative that crisscrosses a century to reflect the tides of time and the ways in which the lives of our great grandmothers resonate in our own .
hardcover scribner book company 2009 isbn13 9781416594987 isbn10 1416594981
abridged n isbn 13 9781416594987 number in series 1 number of pages 239 publisher simon & schuster release date 1245110400000