The Girls From Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow

I am a big sucker for books about women's friendships so it is no surprise that I picked up The Girls From Ames.

Forty years of close friendship is no mean feat!  Especially in this day and age when so many of us leave the scenes of our childhoods and build lives so far away. 

Zaslow who co-wrote The Last Lecture and is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal is a wonderful writer.  He spent a year getting to know these women.  He Interviewed them and their families, hung out at a reunion, read letters and emails and examined scrapbooks. 

This should be a fabulous book.  It is, actually, a fairly interesting book.  It isn't dreadful or even bad; it just isn't wonderful.  I do not want to diminish the fact that these ten women have remained friends through all of life experience for four decades. And yet, this book was a long slog!

It is impossible to cover forty years and eleven character and do them justice in 300 pages.  After all character and plot are not built by telling story after loosely related story and hoping that some how it will all jell. 

Most of my problem with this book stems from the fact that you never really get to know any one of these women well; never mind all of them.  And they are not individually flamboyant enough to clearly differentiate themselves.  I spent a lot of time going "OK, who exactly is Jenny (or Karen or Karla)."  I finally resorted to making a cheat sheet on an index card that I put next to my table.

My other problem is that I didn't get any real sense of place and time.  In other words, nothing really evoked and emotional response or deep recognition of these women or their particular world either as children or as adults.  There early years took place in a world vastly different than mine.  In a well written story (fiction or non-fiction) the author paints a picture that evokes time, place and circumstances.  In this book; not so much.

Perhaps if you are from Ames, or if you are younger than I you will love this book.  I really wanted to!

As children, they formed a special bond, growing up in the small town of Ames, Iowa. As young women, they moved to eight different states, yet they managed to maintain an extraordinary friendship that would carry them through college and careers, marriage and motherhood, dating and divorce, the death of a child, and the mysterious death of the eleventh member of their group.

Capturing their remarkable story, The Girls from Ames is a testament to the enduring, deep bonds of women as they experience life's challenges, and the power of friendship to overcome even the most daunting odds.

Because they came of age in an era of unprecedented opportunity for women, their story also examines how feminism's major breakthroughs have been seized or wasted, and captures what it was like to be girls in the sixties, to come of age in the seventies and eighties, to be new mothers in the nineties, and enter middle age in the new millennium and how close female relationships can shape every aspect of women's lives. With both universal events and deeply personal moments, it's a book that every woman will relate to and be inspired by.

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Bitter is the New Black eBook Edition

Jen Lancaster is sarcastic, self-involved, shallow and condescending. She is also direct, clever and funny.

It should come as no surprise that I had a little trouble in the beginning.  The title says it all:  Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass.   Guess what?  She isn't kidding. 

The first part of the book is a view into her high powered job and  self-reported extravagant lifestyle. Maybe I am just too old to be impressed by designer clothes, Prada handbags, expensive restaurants and spas and "everyone who is anyone in Chicago". 

Things begin to change when she gets downsized.  Resumes, interviews, unemployment and temp jobs.  Moving, selling shoes on eBay, car repo and all.  Great material for her wit and and snappy one liners. 

The first time you see the other side of Jen is when she volunteers to be a dog walker for an animal rescue organization.  She ends up with two of the dogs because she can't bare to let them go.  Behind the wisecracks and cynicism there is a woman who is loyal and cares about her family and friends.  A committed partner in her marriage, a dutiful daughter and a caring aunt.  OK, so sometimes the caring comes out sideways, but she does care; deeply.  Little by little I began to see behind the tough facade.

Months go by and life becomes harder and harder; yet Jen manages to keep her sense of humor and not take herself to seriously (most of the time).  Whatever character flaws she may have, she is frank and painfully honest about her sense of losing herself.  After all, what happens when you lose all the things that make your identity -- your wonderful apartment, your high powered job and your bank account?

What happened for Jen was a serious evaluation of her choices, her priorities, her career choices and ultimately her toughness.  She is a creative survivor and by the end of the book I developed an admiration for both she and her husband Fletch.

Great book to read on the patio, by the pool or beach or on a plane.  Jen will make you laugh, cry and reflect.

Here is the publisher's words:

Jen Lancaster was living the sweet life-until real life kicked her to the curb. She had the perfect man, the perfect job-hell, she had the perfect life-and there was no reason to think it wouldn't last. Or maybe there was, but Jen Lancaster was too busy being manicured, pedicured, highlighted, and generally adored to notice. This is the smart-mouthed, soul-searching story of a woman trying to figure out what happens next when she's gone from six figures to unemployment checks and she stops to reconsider some of the less-than-rosy attitudes and values she thought she'd never have to answer for when times were good. Filled with caustic wit and unusual insight, it's a rollicking read as speedy and unpredictable as the trajectory of a burst balloon.

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The Girl I Left Behind eBook Edition

The Girl I Left Behind is a perfect counterpoint to the Wednesday Sisters.  I hadn't planned it this way.  But overnight I moved seamlessly from the fictional 60s to the non-fictional version.

Judith Nies' memoir is the story of her transformation from a naive small town girl to an worldly aware women.  It is part coming of age story, part travelogue and part history lesson.  It is a report from the front lines from someone who lived it.

Neis captures the essence of the other sixties.  Not the "sex, drugs and rock and roll" variety.  She portrays in detail the political transformation of a generation. 

She weaves together the stories of the cold war, the CIA and the FBI into the fabric of civil rights marches, Vietnam war teach-ins and women's sit ins.  She tells of government secrecy and downright lies.  She talks of old boy's clubs and class in America.

Her stories of working on Capitol Hill in the late sixties bring some of the pivotal players of that time into sharp focus.  They are all on display from Congressman Burton of California to Daniel Ellsburg; from Senator Fulbright to Gloria Stienem. She even manages to compare and contrast the political climate of 1964 and 2004.

She graphically reminds of us of why "The Political is Personal".

This is very much the story of women.  Women and their quest for educations and votes.  Women seeking equal access to and opportunity in the workplace.  The fight for viable health care, birth control and child care. It is the story of women in the 20th century with a straight line from the suffragettes to NOW.  Unfortunately,  many of these stories have have been forgotten. It is important that we remember them and that we honor the brave women who tirelessly worked to ensure that women today have a measure of equality.

Most young women of today take it for granted that a women can vote.  They never question the idea that they can choose a career and be taken seriously in the workplace. Most young girls don't even question the "right" to play sports or have equal access to public accommodations.  Thankfully, most young women do not really understand institutionalized sexual harassment. 

And for all of that, women are too often judged by their appearance, and faced with conflicting demands about who and what they should be.

We've come a long way, baby . . . and we still have a long, long way to go!

Here is the publishers synopsis:

At the height of the Vietnam War protests, twenty-eight-year-old Judith Nies and her husband lived a seemingly idyllic life. Both were building their respective careers in Washington—Nies as the speechwriter and chief staffer to a core group of antiwar congressmen, her husband as a Treasury department economist. They lived in the carriage house of the famed Marjorie Merriweather Post estate. But when her husband brought home a list of questions from an FBI file with Judith's name on the front, Nies soon realized that her life was about to take a radical turn. Shocked to find herself the focus of an FBI investigation into her political activities, Nies began to reevaluate her role as grateful employee and dutiful wife. In The Girl I Left Behind, she chronicles the experiences of those women who, like herself, reinvented their lives in the midst of a wildly shifting social and political landscape.

In a fresh, candid look at the 1960s, Nies pairs illuminating descriptions of feminist leaders, women's liberation protests, and other pivotal social developments with the story of her own transformation into a staunch activist and writer. From exposing institutionalized sexism on Capitol Hill in her first published article to orchestrating the removal of a separate "Ladies Gallery" on the House floor to taking leadership of the Women in Fellowships Committee, Nies discusses her own efforts to enlarge women's choices and to change the workplace—and how the repercussions of those efforts in the sixties can still be felt today.

A heartfelt memoir and piercing social commentary, The Girl I Left Behind recounts one woman's courageous journey toward independence and equality. It also evaluates the consequences of the feminist movement on the same women who made it happen—and on the daughters born in their wake.

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The Wednesday Sisters eBook edition

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Clayton is as close to a perfect beach read as you can get.

It is a rare book that has one smart, engaging and has a well rounded and believable woman character. Never mind five of them! This is the story of five women living conventional lives in unconventional times.

From a purely technical point of view, Clayton has pulled off an impressive feat. She manages to make each one of these five women real and full character who all get equal time and equal voice.

The story starts with the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and traces these women's lives through roughly 10 years. Those ten years include the Apollo space flights and burning bras; peace marches and Miss America contests, the birth of modern Silicon Valley and the first New York Marathon.

The story is about women and friendship. As the world around them changes these women are busy building relationships with each other and with books.

In a broad sense It is about family. The ones we come from and the ones we create. It is about the frailty and fortitude. It is about awaking, change and growth.

It is also laugh out loud funny and tear-jerkingly sad. I mean really, how can you resist a book that starts out:

"That's us, there in the photograph. Yes, that's me-in one of my chubbier phases, though I suppose one of these days I'll have to face up to the fact that it's the thinner me that's the "phase," not the chubbier one. And going left to right, that's Linda (her hair loose and combed, but then she brought the camera, she was the only one who knew we'd be taking a photograph). Next to her is Ally, pale as ever, and then Kath. And the one in the white gloves in front-the one in the coffin-that's Brett."

I was hooked from the first paragraph.

So grab your suntan lotion, your favorite drink and a bag of chips, sit in your favorite lounge chair and prepare to enjoy!

Here's the publishers synopsis:

Friendship, loyalty, and love lie at the heart of Meg Waite Clayton’s beautifully written, poignant, and sweeping novel of five women who, over the course of four decades, come to redefine what it means to be family. For thirty-five years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967. These “Wednesday Sisters” seem to have little in common: Frankie is a timid transplant from Chicago, brutally blunt Linda is a remarkable athlete, Kath is a Kentucky debutante, quiet Ally has a secret, and quirky, ultra-intelligent Brett wears little white gloves with her miniskirts. But they are bonded by a shared love of both literature–Fitzgerald, Eliot, Austen, du Maurier, Plath, and Dickens–and the Miss America Pageant, which they watch together every year. As the years roll on and their children grow, the quintet forms a writers circle to express their hopes and dreams through poems, stories, and, eventually, books. Along the way, they experience history in the making: Vietnam, the race for the moon, and a women’s movement that challenges everything they have ever thought about themselves, while at the same time supporting one another through changes in their personal lives brought on by infidelity, longing, illness, failure, and success. Humorous and moving, The Wednesday Sisters is a literary feast for book lovers that earns a place among those popular works that honor the joyful, mysterious, unbreakable bonds between friends.

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