A Short History of Women

Spanning the twentieth century, this novel explores acts of self-assertion carried out by various women in one family, beginning with a British suffragist who starves herself for her cause. The use of multiple narrators helps the listener keep the characters straight, especially as the story moves back and forth between generations (and there are two Dorothys to keep track of). Ruth Moore gives the budding suffragist a suitably spirited voice, and Nicola Barber uses a meditative tone and precise delivery to portray the self-contained Evelyn, who becomes a scientist in the U.S. after WWI. Narrator Eliza Foss shines as she expresses the anger felt by Dorothy Barrett, a woman in late middle age whose son dies of cancer. This is a slow-paced but engaging story. A.E.B. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 9, 2009
Walbert—2004 National Book Award nominee for Our Kind
—offers a beautiful and kaleidoscopic view of the 20th century through the eyes of several generations of women in the Townsend family. The story begins with Dorothy Townsend, a turn-of-the-century British suffragist who dies in a hunger strike. From Dorothy's death, Walbert travels back and forth across time and continents to chronicle other acts of self-assertion by Dorothy's female descendants. Dorothy's daughter, Evelyn, travels to America after WWI to make her name in the world of science—and escape from her mother's infamy. Decades later, her niece, also named Dorothy, has a late-life crisis and gets arrested in 2003 for taking photos of an off-limits military base in Delaware. Dorothy's daughters, meanwhile, struggle to find meaning in their modern bourgeois urban existences. The novel takes in historical events from the social upheaval of pre-WWI Britain to VJ day in New York City, a feminist conscious-raising in the '70s and the Internet age. The lives of these women reveal that although oppression of women has grown more subtle, Dorothy's self-sacrifice reverberates through generations. Walbert's look at the 20th century and the Townsend family is perfectly calibrated, intricately structured and gripping from page one.

October 1, 2010

In her third novel, following the National Book Award nominee Our Kind (2004), Walbert (www.katewalbert.com) explores the long-range impact of the women's movement through five generations of the Townsend family. The story opens in 1915 as British suffragette Dorothy Townsend starves herself for the cause and continues into the 21st century as two sisters who have it all--career, education, and children--feel constantly that they are shortchanging at least one of those aspects of their lives. Though this audio lacks the helpful lineage the print edition provides, the multivoice narration more than compensates as Nicola Barber, Ruth Moore, Kathleen McInerney, Eliza Foss, and Paula Parker help listeners to distinguish among the many characters, through all their interwoven stories. An excellent choice for book discussion groups. [The Scribner hc, a New York Times Best Book of 2009, was described as being "gripping, intense, and powerful," LJ 1/09.--Ed.]--Nann Blaine Hilyard, Zion-Benton P.L., IL

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