Customer Reviews

The Generosity of Women

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The Generosity of Women is a novel that follows the lives of a group of neurotic, confused, and fragmented New York City women. Each has a unique voice and compelling story, and the novel is told using each voice as a separate narrator. First of all, let me say that I normally enjoy novels with multiple narrators; however, Courtney Eldridge's novel takes the concept a bit too far. The narrators shift so rapidly that it takes quite a bit of time to really get a grasp on who they are and what they're about. Just when I would think that I was getting somewhere with one character/narrator, the narrative would shift to another. Keep in mind that I'm not talking about pages here; I'm talking about paragraphs. I guess this style of writing is supposed to mirror the constant camera angle shifts found within other types of media, but it does not appeal to me. The concept is refreshing, but it somehow misses the mark.

But I couldn't finish the book. The description already tells you that the book is about 4 women friends, although it doesn't really seem to me they are really friends, and their interactions.

I couldn't finish this book because it's written in dialogue. Like listening to half a phone conversation or someone talking to a psychiatrist. The book goes back and forth with these dialogues that tell the story. But so far I haven't been able to find a real story and the characters bored me.

This might have been a good book had it been written differently, but as it is, I became bored pretty quickly.

Thank you.

MEF

If this type of writing appeals to you, then you may like this book.

I love books dealing with women and their friendships. And when I read the blurb for this book I thought it would be the book for me. However the reality of reading (or attempting to read) this book was tedious and awkward. While I usually love alternating points of view, in previous books each chapter has been from a different POV. In this book we have the characters of Joyce, Robbie, Lisa, Lynne, Jordan, and Adela changing every paragraph. It's hard enough to keep six women straight without further confusing the situation in this manner. And there were no quotation marks (I have seen this before in books attempting to be more "literary") and that threw me off as well. In the end, I gave it my 50-100 page test and it was so unengaging, I didn't even care to skim the last 250 pages as I will sometimes. It is beyond me how some books get published. Obviously her agent and editor enjoyed it and thought it would sell, but this one just isn't one I'd recommend.

Like snippets of conversation, the story in The Generosity of Women is revealed; instead of peeling away the layers to expose the inner core, this tale of the connections between women seems to "unfold," as it were, by adding layers of details--and doing so by retelling the same events from different perspectives.

Each segment bears one woman's name; that woman details events in the first person narrative, speaking her own individual "truth" in an exchange with one or two other individuals.

The women are Joyce, an art curator; Roberta (Bobbie), a gynecologist; Lisa, a patient with a troubled history; Lynne, Lisa's sister, a woman with secret betrayals lurking in her past; Jordan, Lynne's teenage daughter; and Adela, the twenty-three year old adopted daughter of Bobbie.

Amidst this cast of rather compelling individuals, the men play out their roles almost like secondary characters, and yet the mating dance is a central theme, as the tale is gradually woven, thread by thread, toward the final curtain call.

In many ways, I found the writer's style confusing, or even off-putting...she repeated the same incidents over and over, but viewed from each person's perspective. Sometimes, it was difficult to pinpoint time and place--did these events happen over a very short period of time, or was the time/space continuum shifting because of how elusive memory can be?

Perhaps this is a book that should be read in one sitting. I found it disturbingly difficult to keep my "place" in the series of events, and had to reread and scramble to discover just where I was each time I resumed the story. Another aspect that contributed to the confusion of the story was the author's style of writing conversations between the first person narrator and the others in each vignette, without quotations; the conversations flowed back and forth without the "break" offered by quotes or even without changing paragraphs. For example, here is an excerpt from a section entitled "Joyce:"

"Here's the question--here's what you got to ask yourself, okay. The question is, do you want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or...or do you just want me to blow sunshine up [...]? Wait, he said, I have to choose? Yes, I said. But just one? he said, and I said, See, this is the part men never seem to understand: given two options and told to choose one, one means one, sweetheart. Just one, he said. Just, I said."

The writer's style is certainly unusual, and, as I pointed out before, it would be easier to "keep up" if read all in one sitting. However, I would not recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a flowing narrative and a tale revealed with clarity of time and place.

The blurring aspects have a kind of artsy appeal, and despite my frustrations with the style, I did find myself plugging along to the very end.

The elements that I found annoying or off-putting led to my conclusion that, at best, this is a 3.5 read.

Laurel-Rain Snow

This is not a book you can simply skim. The arty-snarky-angry musings of Joyce, the troubled romances of Bobbie, the poetic dysfunction of former runaway Lisa, Lynne's housewife desperation, Adela's own tangled heart-yearnings, and Jordan, Lynne's daughter who involves Bobbie in a teenage pregnancy gone wrong. The sheer words, the interweaving of voices, and the characters' construction of their own self-important worlds, which should challenge us to think about our own, make this more than a book about a logn tragic weekend involving six women.

By turns biting, acidic, tender, earnest (especially involving Joyce's own regrets with her son and her relationship with her mother), Courtney Eldridge's prose takes us into a journey as nonlinear as abstract painting, but with its own logic. The reader who sticks with the characters will find epipanies, as lonely Lisa does in the rain at the train station.

This was a well, though oddly, written book. The first thing you will notice is the lack of quotation marks. This takes a bit of getting used to. There are conversations, but no quotation marks. That said....

My girlfriend has read this book two times and loves it! It has a fantastic plot and a great plot twist that any situational-drama lover will love! The books jumps between perspectives; Parents, children, teenagers, sisters, friends. It allows you to see the plot from all angles.

A very unique, highly exciting page turner!

Once you are able to make a distiquision between the many characters, you eventually get to a point where you can't put the book down.

Although the characters seemed to ramble at times, I enjoyed reading about "women of a certain age" that still had gusto and excitement in their lives. At times you wondered how folks could get themselves in the myriad of circumstances but in the end this is a good read.

There is nothing like having your girls in your corner, no matter what age you are.

Unlike many of the reviewers of this book, I do not mind a book that explores pure characer and relationships, without plot. In order for that type of book to work for me, the characters need to be people that I care about. Unfortunately, it is hard to care about the characters in this book. They are selfish, shallow and somewhat sniveling. I might have added snotty and self-absorbed, but then some might think I was engaging in purposeful alliteration, which is something I strive to avoid. Anyway, other than containing some interesting dialogue, there is not much I can recommend about this book.

Is the message I received from this lovely little novel. The characters were Joyce, Bobbie, Lisa, Lynne, Jordan, and Adela.

For some reason I just don't understand the complexity of most relationships between women. It always seems there's some sort of game going on and no one told me the rules.

It seems in most relationships, kindness if not ultimately loving kindness, often prevails. That's what I experienced as I read The Generosity of Women. The lives and relationships seemed familiar as I got further and further into the story. Although the story was about the difference between the women as much as it was about how their lives were interwoven, ultimately they came together. As I came to the end of the story I can only hope I'll have a few really good friends who will be there for me no matter what, and I'll be there for them as well.

This Review is based on an Advance Reading Copy of the yet-to-be-published paperback...

Joyce and Bobbie have been friends for more than 30 years. Joyce is a brash, outspoken, often very inappropriately crude curator of an art gallery, and Bobbie is an OB/GYN with a successful practice in the city. They share a complicated relationship with each other (think love-hate), and a deep affection for Bobbie's adopted daughter, Adela. The novel opens with Joyce (in process of a bitter divorce) playing matchmaker for never-married Bobbie, who is ambivalent about romance.

Their story, and the stories of Lisa, Lynne and Lynne's daughter, Jordan, are all told through first person narrative. It takes skill to pull off such a format for a novel, and I almost gave this four stars, because Ms. Eldredge pulls it off without having the characters sound too much alike. Unlike other reviews here, I think her first person narrative told through six different women was skillfully spot-on. I would agree that lack of traditionally gramatical paragraphs and dialog slow the pace of reading, but didn't find that discouraging. It seemed like a fresh, unique approach. Something unusual. Unexpected.

Back to the storyline...

Bobbie finds love, early on in the novel, with kind, persistant, Paul, who accepts her and treats her with a tenderness she hasn't thusfar experienced. As a busy doctor, it takes a special man to deal with her sometime irregular hours; playfully, Bobbie's new beau tries to encourage her to relax more and ease up on herself. Bobbie is often too available to her patients, particularly those grappling with the issue of abortion. I personally haven't known any doctors like that, though admittedly, I never had or was in the position to have an abortion. Perhaps it's different under those circumstances?

Lisa was one of Bobbie's patients, and when Lisa's sister, Lynne, calls to ask for a recommended doctor, Lisa gives her sister Bobbie's number. Unbeknownst to Lisa, her 16 year old niece, Jordan, is pregant... sending her mother, Lynne, and their entire household into termoil. The mother-daughter conflicts between Lynne and Jordan, while ringing true in this case, repeat throughout the book with other mother-daughter combinations (Joyce and her mother, Sonja, plus Bobbie and Adela), resulting in what begind to feel like a tired cliche.

Lisa, of course, is Jordan's 'cool aunt', though Jordan doesn't really know her aunt's deepest struggles, insecurities and regrets. In fact, Lisa doesn't expose those inner struggles to anyone. She seems to have built solid barriers to closeness with anyone, including her husband and infant son. When her sister, Lynne, begins to unravel and drops a huge bombshell concerning a family secret, Lisa seems to lose herself in reminiscing about a past lover... presumably in an effort to avoid thinking about the disturbing admission.

The individual narratives throughout the book do repeat several times, each repeat bringing more details into the storyline. This is kind of tiring. It would be better, perhaps, to have the story unfold chronologically without the back and forth effect?

Also, there's far too much vulgar language throughout the book, and (in this reader's opinion) too much emphasis on--as repeated hundreds of times in the novel--f-ing. It reminded me too much of Sex in the City episodes. In my nearly five decades of experience living all over the U.S., that's just not the primary focus of most women. The character's lives seem to be wrapped up throughout the book in men, sex, booze, mild drug use and difficult, strained relationships they each prefer not to deal with.

It could be a much better book, I feel, if the vulagrity were toned down, each character more deeply developed, and the story itself unfolded in a smoother, chronological order. As for her writing, Courtney Eldredge seems to be an upcoming novelist to watch; she is talented if not quite polished.