Synopses & Reviews
The critically acclaimed author Marilyn French, of the seven million copy bestseller The Women’s Room, returns to that exploration of the truths and realities of women’s lives, this time 35 years after the women’s movement began. Set in the mountains of the Berkshires, this novel revolves around four disparate women whose personalities vary as greatly as their ages but who manage to develop a profound, life-altering friendship.
Called “terrifying [and] impressive” by The New York Times and “courageous…honest… powerful” by The Chicago Tribune, French’s work celebrates the relationships among women and questions what more is needed on the journey to equality.
Synopsis
Marilyn French's seven million copy bestseller
The Women's Room crystallized the issues that ignited the women's movement. Now the acclaimed author updates that classic with a new exploration of the truths and realities behind women's lives.
In the Name of Friendship dares to investigate how the women's movement changed the lives of those it touched and what hurdles it left to cross.
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 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.
With this unusual group of multi-generational ladies, French tells a truly rare tale about four women who accidentally come into each other's lives and in the process form an enduring friendship. It is a story of supporting one another, of looking at the grim conflicts created by cultural expectations of women, and realizing you are not alone--truly a tale of continuing hope.
Synopsis
Like The Women's Room. Focuses on women's lives 35 years after the women's movement.
About the Author
Pioneering feminist thinker Marilyn French has written numerous works of literary criticism, history, memoir, and fiction. Her bestselling classic, The Women's Room, embodied the issues that ignited the women's movement for millions of readers. Recently, she has published the novel In the Name of Friendship and a four volume series of women's history entitled From Eve to Dawn. Stéphanie Genty is an associate professor at the Université d'Evry-Val d'Essonne and she wrote a doctoral thesis on gender identity and feminine malaise in the works of Marilyn French. She has published on Margaret Atwood and Nadine Gordimer.