The Best Books of 2012 - part 2

5. "The City and The City" by China Mieville
A tremendous piece of fiction about an assumedly Eastern European city which has been split into two cities and where citizens must pretend never to notice the other half of their city. Defies genres and enchants readers. 

4. "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe

A classic tale of 1950s office girls striving for more in life - careers, marriages, fame. A mandatory read for lovers of Mad Men. 

3. "Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers" by Stephanie Wellen Levine
The most gripping non-fiction book I have ever read. I literally could not put it down. Levine tells the stories of Hasidic Lubavitcher teenage girls living in Crown Heights, New York, where everyday demands a delicate balancing act of normal teenage pursuits (shopping, gossiping, thinking about boys) and strict observance of orthodox Jewish traditions and rules (kosher food, kosher music and gender segregation). Eyeopening and inspiring. 

2. "The Group" by Mary McCathy 
Interested in feminism or womens rights? Enjoyed Sex & The City but found its values superficial? Drop the boxsets and pick up this book instead. It is a tale of women in 1930s New York, a time and place where the role of women and the traditional gender patterns were changing rapidly and drastically. 

1. "Fear of Flying" by Erica Jong
This is a must read for women born in the 1980s and 1990s because even though it was written in 1973, it was never more relevant than today. It is about the mental emancipation of one headstrong yet insecure young woman and I've probably thought about this book and about its protagonist Isadora every day since I started reading it It and she really made an impression on me and taught me something about letting go of your fears. More than just a book, this is a zeitgeist, a manifest and a must read for young women. 

Role Models - Fascinating Fictional Females

I'm not sure if I'd call myself a feminist - I'm not that into the whole women-against-men rhetorics to be honest but I'm happy to confess that I love nothing more than a book with a strong female protagonist. Like Katniss Everdeen or Scarlett O'Hara. I like my women, like I like my G&T - strong and unapologetic. 

And with no further ado, here's my list of books that features strong, sassy females who make for great (albeit fictional) role models and mentors: 

"Fear of Flying" by Erica Jong

"The Group" by Mary McCarthy

"Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles

"The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe

"Gone With The Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

"A Vision of Loveliness" by Louise Levene

"The Stars in the Bright Sky" by Alan Warner

"The Summer Without Men" by Siri Hustvedt

Review: "A Vision of Loveliness"

The people who say that the world was a simpler place back in the days before internet, mobile phones, waterproof mascara and Topshop haven't read "A Vision of Loveliness" by Louise Levene. Or "The Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles. Or "The Group" by Mary McCarthy". Or "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe. Books about women in the pre-waterproof mascara days essentially. 

But back to "A Vision of Loveliness". It's London in the 1960s and Jane is an intelligent and ambitions young lady who studies everything from Paris catwalking manuals to books about etiquette. She's eager, more than eager, to leave her life in boring Norbury behind and enter another, more glamourous world. So when she spots her ticket to this world, an expensive handbag left behind in a pub, she is not slow to grab it and she makes fast friends with the owner of the handbag, the radiant, beautiful Susie. 

Susie lives a life of champagne, expensive dinner and jewelry on the surface but beneath is a life in a dinghy, dirty flat, working as mannequin wearing sweat-stained dresses and trading "favours" for furs. To Jane, this looks like the glamourous life that she has dreamed of for so long - miles away from the Scotch eggs and economical dresses of her aunt's house in Norbury where there's a distinct lack of both money and love. 
At least in Susie's world there's money, even if love is thin on the ground... 

This is the story of London girls using their beauty and body to make a living in a time long before the glamour models and reality stars. Nothing comes for free, it is hard work staying beautiful for these girls and even at 19, they are aware that there is a sell-by date only a few years in the future. So they put everything on the line to get to where they want to be. They risk it all in the hope of hitting jackpot, of marrying a rick, upper class man. 

Read it if: You like Mad Men and the 1960's and the idea of Swinging London. If you enjoyed "The Group" or "The Rules of Civility" or "The Best of Everything"

Women in a Time of Change

A while back I read "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe and my review was pretty raving: I loved it! So when I heard that others who like "The Best of Everything", also liked Mary McCarthy's "The Group", there was no way around it. I had to have it. Last week, when my boyfriend and I went on vacation, I started reading "The Group" on the train to Gatwick airport and pretty much from the first page, I was hooked. 


"The Group" is a eight young women, all graduates of Vassar, who become close friends during their college years. The novel follows them as they leave their college days behind to pursue love, careers and plans for the future. As characters, they are very different and the focus of the novel shifts from one girl to the next so that we get to understand their individual stories one at a time while glimpsing the all of them in each others stories. It is a genius way to to tell the story of this group of girls and it kept me reading furiously, as I tried to understand how their lives interwove and how their actions impacted each other. 


What becomes very clear from the stories of these girls is, that they are living in time of change. World War I, the depression, the changing roles of women, of marriage, of sex. These are a generation of women who have to find their own way in life because the world has changed tremendously since their mothers were young. They are all keen to make a difference, to do something meaningful with their lives in a world where nothing is as it once was. As a historical novel, it works beautifully. 


For me, however, the history aspects were an advantage but not the main advantage. I found that one of the best things about "The Group" is that there are no clear goodies or baddies emerging from the stories, each of us readers will root for a different girl and who we root for might change. Personally, I found the bohemian "women who loves too much" Kay slightly exasperating and Priss made me want to shake some sense into her. However, I suspect that many others will see Kay as a hero because of her fierce pursuit of her ambition to "do good" in New York. 


My favourites changed a bit as I read but at the end of the book, I was found that three girls had made most impression on made and had come closest to my heart: 


Dottie for her robbed innocence and her steely character as she realizes that sometimes the happy ending will look different to what we imagined. 


Polly for her maturity and her insistence that what counts is that she is happy - not other peoples perception of her or her circumstances in life. 


And last but not least the beautiful and fascinating Lakey who is understood to live a charmed existence in glamorous Europe but who turns out to be the girl who may have most to fight for. 


Read it if: You like "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe, "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann. You wouldn't mind going back in time and visiting 1930s New York. 

Review: "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe

Some books  retain their freshness decade after decade, never losing their relevance. "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe is one of those books. It is truly special. Published in 1958, it was written during the 1950s when women wore smart skirt suits to the office and only worked to fill the time until they could get married. Preferably to a man with a good enough job to fund a house with double-garage and school fees for two children. Last year, apparently, the book got a bit of a renaissance because it was featured on Mad Men - however, I found it thanks to you wonderful people in the blogosphere!

Every day young women flood out of the subway stations in central New York making their way to the city's offices. One of them is Caroline, a young graduate from a good college, who discovers that she has ambitions and slowly starts to work her way up in the world of publishing. While working for a publishing company in the glamourous Rockefeller Center, she meets the obsessive actress Gregg who becomes her flatmate, the beautiful April who is as terrible with men as she is with personal finance and the successful single mother Barbara, divorced at the tender age of 21.

As chapter after chapter weaves their stories together into one story, I felt like these girls became my friends. Their world absorbed me completely and as they experienced bad romances, difficulties in their careers and worry about families and futures, I became more and more enthralled to the story. When the last page turned, it felt completely wrong. I just did not want to let go. I craved knowledge of what happened next and the last few days, I have been thinking about all of them, especially about Caroline and Barbara.

It is a story of looking for love and finding instead sex, friendship or rejection. Of trying to figure out whether to pursue a career or while away the hours until a walk to the altar. It is absolutely fascinating and many of the observations are as relevant today as they were then. Like the lecherous senior executive who will grab any female thigh when he's had a bit too much to drinks or the girl who brings even her bridal underwear to work in order to get the approval and envy of her colleagues. It resonates with me as a modern office girl and I found the office politics very familiar, just as the trouble that these girls experience with prioritising family, work and boyfriends is just like the stuff that my friends and I talk about today.

The beauty of this book is in its relevance, in the way that all girls will recognize something of themselves in these girls even though the books was written over fifty years ago. Also it is beautifully written with every girl's voice being distinct and characteristic.

Read it if: You enjoyed "The Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles" or "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann. You prefer a good book to a re-run episode of Sex & The City.