The Rules of Magic, by Alice Hoffman and The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing

Two months into this year, I was well ahead of my usual reading schedule, but had hardly read any books by women.* I had read 11 books in 2019, but only one by a woman when I started The Time of the Doves on February 27. So, with Women's History Month around the corner, I decided to observe it by reading only books by women in March. I have now finished two, in addition to The Time of the Doves.

I can't remember who recommended The Rules of Magic, but I think it came some time ago from someone on Twitter (as a general recommendation, not for me personally). For some reason that's hard to pinpoint, I feel like this book isn't my usual fare, but I found it thoroughly enjoyable and totally absorbing on my subway commute - always a good thing. I even found myself looking to see if "Practical Magic" was streaming on any of my services (it was not). Maybe I should read the book?

Next I read The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing, which is really almost a novella rather than a novel in length. I had not read Doris Lessing before and I picked up this book at some point because it was slim and seemed more approachable than The Golden Notebook. The Fifth Child is a strange book. In some ways it feels dated - the central characters are already anachronistic in the book's own present, which spans from the mid 1960s to the 1980s (coincidentally, roughly the same time-frame spanned in The Rules of Magic). In other ways, some of the issues it confronts seem very relevant still today. Something about the pressure we put on mothers and the way they are held responsible for their children felt present and urgent to me, particularly the interactions between the book's mother and the medical establishment. The Fifth Child made me uncomfortable, and I suppose that's what it intended to do.


*With the caveat, which I started a post on some time ago but have not yet finished writing, that I've read several books that were translated by women this year.

The Time of the Doves, by Mercè Rodoreda

Based solely on the merits of Mercè Rodoreda's A Broken Mirror, I went out and got 4 additional books by her. It's my understanding that The Time of the Doves is her most well-known work, which I suppose is why I went to it first when I was deciding what next to read by Rodoreda. I read this book in bursts, which was an unfortunate way to read it. I started it just before leaving on one trip and finished it while I was away on a second trip, and I was home for basically two days in between. So, I was in the process of reading The Time of the Doves for 11 days, but I probably only actually read it on 4 or 5 of those days, with stretches in between. I read the last 70 pages in one sitting, and if I had started reading it at a less disrupted time of my life, I probably would have read the whole thing in 3 days. As I said, my reading conditions were not ideal.

War stories are usually men's stories, but The Time of the Doves is a woman's war story. It follows its narrator from the day she meets her husband before the Spanish Civil War, through the trials of her life and their relationship, which intensify as he becomes involved in the war, and later into the post-war period. While the war is central to the story of The Time of the Doves, it also remains partly at remove while the book follows the domestic life of a woman in Barcelona during the war. Yesterday, completely by chance, I happened across this Robert Capa photo, "Running for shelter when the air raid siren sounds, Barcelona, Spain, January 1936." It could be a scene straight from The Time of the Doves. The war is there, sometimes in the background, sometimes forcefully in the foreground, but these women must still go about their daily lives. They must care for their children and take their dogs out for walks. These struggles feel more tangible and relatable than many battlefield stories.

The Time of the Doves is written in a stream of consciousness style, but is quite accessible. It reads almost as if the narrator is recounting her experiences on a therapist's couch, reflecting on her life, and it's really quite beautiful.