In the Name of Friendship

Failed my 50-page test...and I gave it 100 pages because I like her previous work.
I had expected French's new novel of ideas to be about the kinds of older women I could more easily identify with now -- women, married or not, who had gone to work and fought for careers; women who had left their husbands back in the 1970s and raised children alone; women now dealing with loneliness, health problems, uncertain economic futures. But French's women are a rather rarefied group. Exceedingly well-versed in feminist theory and women's history, they venerate Emma Goldman, Emily Dickinson and Eleanor of Aquitaine and celebrate their profound friendship every March 25, on Lady's Day, the pagan new year, by dancing with each other.

However none of show more the three married women ever opted (or was forced) to become self-supporting or to contribute to a struggling household; even the life of the unmarried composer has been eased by the house she inherited from her family. Sitting on Jenny's porch, with no financial worries hanging over them, it is easy for them to congratulate themselves on their beautiful absence of competitive spirit. (There seem to be no poorer women with fewer choices in Steventon; they all live in Bridgeport, where Emily's niece has opened a free maternity clinic.) show less

4 various women — friends in the Berkshires — Very Feminist + good

Set in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, this wise novel is a group portrait of four disparate women who forge life-altering friendships despite personalities that vary as greatly as their vocations and ages. The novel weaves together a series of family crises with the friendships that help the four women refashion their lives. Maddy, the seventy-six-year-old real estate agent and matriarch of the group, struggles with the gradual death of her angry and rebellious Vietnam-marked son; fifty-year-old Alicia fights to reconnect her gay son with her newly retired husband; seventy-year-old musician Emily strives to bridge the gap with her estranged niece show more right at the moment her composition career starts to finally bloom; and Jenny, the thirty-year-old painter and baby of the group, questions the life she has created with her successful painter husband and tries to decide if she wants more from life. show less

Good book but don't agree with everything but good characters of women
book club book, Anna

In naam van de vriendschap, vertelt het verhaal van vier vriendinnen. Maddy, Emily, Alicia en Jenny hebben elkaar bij toeval leren kennen in Steventon, een Amerikaans provinciestadje, waar Maddy en Emily hun hele leven al wonen en waar de veel jongere Jenny en Alicia na hun vlucht uit het hectische New Yorkse bestaan zijn terechtgekomen. Op het oog hebben ze niets gemeen, de makelaarster die een tweede start maakt, de ‘oude vrijster’ die haar leven aan de muziek gewijd heeft, de schrijfster, en de jongste van allemaal, de succesvolle kunstenares.