The
pandemic has offered time for extensive reading. This month in addition to
seven short stories, I’ve read Writers & Lovers by Lily King, Witches,
Midwives & Nurses by Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English and City
of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert.
The
short stories were in a series offered for free on Amazon Prime. I enjoyed the
change of pace but none stood out. Witches, Midwives & Nurses
traces women healers back to the thirteenth century. It would be of interest to
those interested in the suppression of women in the medical profession.
Eye-opening, as the suppression appears to persist to this day.
City of Girls follows a
nineteen-year-old girl through her life up until her nineties in New York City.
Set beginning in 1940, the main character mainly describes her sexual exploits
and her life as a seamstress starting in the theatre. A self-described
sensualist, we find the character, interestingly, most intriguing at the end of
the novel when she meets her platonic, one true love.
Writers & Lovers is the first novel
I’ve read by Lily King. Casey is a thirty-one-year-old aspiring novelist stuck
in a job as a waitress and deeply grieving over the unexpected, premature death
of her mother. Over the course of the story, she grapples not only with that
death, but three lovers, the completion of her novel, overwhelming debt, a
precarious living situation and Cancer. It’s little wonder she begins to have
panic attacks. King is a lovely writer and makes you care and root for the
character while wanting to shake her at the same time.
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