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.
