Margaret Ryan never really meant to start a book club . . . or a feminist revolution in her buttoned-up suburb.
By 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan is living the American woman’s dream. She has a husband, three children, a station wagon, and a home in Concordia–one of Northern Virginia’s most exclusive and picturesque suburbs. She has a standing invitation to the neighborhood coffee klatch, and now, thanks to her husband, a new subscription to A Woman’s Place–a magazine that tells housewives like Margaret exactly who to be and what to buy. On paper, she has it all. So why doesn’t that feel like enough?
Margaret is thrown for a loop when she first meets Charlotte Gustafson, Concordia’s newest and most intriguing resident. As an excuse to be in the mysterious Charlotte’s orbit, Margaret concocts a book club get-together and invites two other neighborhood women–Bitsy and Viv–to the inaugural meeting. As the women share secrets, cocktails, and their honest reactions to the controversial bestseller The Feminine Mystique, they begin to discover that the American dream they’d been sold isn’t all roses and sunshine–and that their secret longing for more is something they share. Nicknaming themselves the Bettys, after Betty Friedan, these four friends have no idea their impromptu club and the books they read together will become the glue that helps them hold fast through tears, triumphs, angst, and arguments–and what will prove to be the most consequential and freeing year of their lives.
CW/TW – most characters smoke and drink, one character has spent time in a mental health facility
Dear Ms. Bostwick,
This book is hitting on a lot of themes I’ve seen recently – female friendship plus historical struggles that women have faced to get us to the point we’re at now. Tossing in a book club is an added bonus. The book starts strongly with some dynamite female characters but, I’ll be honest, it also loses its way a bit by the end.
Four wives, living in a new planned community outside of Washington, DC are brought together when one, Margaret, who wants to meet an uninhibited woman she’s seen in the drugstore, has the idea to start a book club. Charlotte doesn’t seem that interested but then suggests that they read a new and controversial book. Thus is born The Bettys. We will watch as they face conflicts and crises pertinent to the time when women needed a husband’s approval to do almost anything outside of childcare, cooking, and cleaning the house.
Margaret – the writer – and Charlotte – the wealthy rebel – are the two main female characters with former nurse and mother of six Viv plus academically thwarted Bitsy mainly as backup. At first, some aren’t sure that “The Feminine Mystique” speaks to them at all. But bit by bit the ways that they’ve been hemmed in and herded into a corner begin to appear in the plot.
The women aren’t just copies of each other though nor are their life circumstances. Two wanted what was thought to be a woman’s road to happiness – marriage, a house in the suburbs, and children and both are more or less happy with what they’ve got. One was railroaded into marriage because of family pressure due to her publicly acting out while another faced losing the family home after her father’s death and accepted a proposal for a marriage of convenience. One husband is a louse, one is selfish, one needs a wake-up call and the other – who appears infrequently – is shown as a prince among men.
By midway, I could see some of the conflicts coming – both in the marriages as well as struggles for the women to be faced with. Margaret gets a part time job and needs her husband signing off on her opening a savings account, one husband is pushing his wife to get pregnant, one wife faces an unplanned pregnancy, and one woman tries to break into a career that few women can achieve. Then there are the issues of the mothers trying to carve out me-time while still keeping the floors mopped and waxed, cooking all the meals, and picking up the children.
The things they’re faced with are real – I remember my mother facing some of these even before she had to go back to work – and for the most part their inclusion in the plot feels realistic but at the same time, predictable. In the final quarter, things pick up with Margaret making a stand, Charlotte finally finding her freedom, Bitsy seeing a way to achieve her dream, and Viv being able to work in a career she loves. Then there’s an epilogue of sorts that felt tacked on.
I really like that the women work out their own happiness and that not all the men in the book are assholes. Two are actually pretty good guys. The epilogue, regardless of how out of place it felt, shows the daughters of the MCs taking advantage of what the mid-century women of the 60s and 70s fought for. Luckily for me, my parents treated me the way the veterinarian who helps Bitsy was treated by her father – they expected that I would go to college and thus be able to do whatever I wanted to. B-
~Jayne
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Jayne
Another long time reader who read romance novels in her teens, then took a long break before started back again about 25 years ago. She enjoys historical romance/fiction best, likes contemporaries, action- adventure and mysteries, will read suspense if there’s no TSTL characters and is currently reading more fantasy and SciFi.
