Over the years, I’ve read a number of Marie Bostwick’s novels. The Book Club for Troublesome Women is the first one that made me angry. It wasn’t the book itself. It was a very good book. But Bostwick included so many unfair conditions for women that were in place in 1963. That made me angry. When my sister asked me if I should be angry about something I couldn’t change, I commented that people are trying to take us back to 1963, so there were reasons to be angry about this book.
In March 1963, four housewives in Concordia, Virginia form a book club. Margaret Ryan was inspired to start it when she met a new resident, Charlotte Gustafson, who seemed to be a free spirit, with her full-length mink coat and her cigarettes. But Margaret wasn’t interested in reading Betty Smiths’ A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The devil in her insisted they read The Feminine Mystique, a new book by Betty Friedan. Two of Margaret’s friends, Vivian Buschetti, the mother of six, and a young bride, Bitsy Cobb, the wife of a local vet, reluctantly read the book. Although most of them aren’t enthusiastic, a few cocktails and Charlotte’s insistence that women could be more than housewives and mothers moves them to talk a little more freely about their marriages and frustrations with the working world.
Times have changed after World War II, when women found jobs in the workplace. Now, the ideal woman stays home, cooks and bakes, has children, and is supposed to be satisfied as a helpmate to her husband. Viv had been a combat nurse in the war, and loved her career. Six children later, she’s looking to work part time as a nurse again, but no one wants a woman with six kids. Margaret wants to be a writer, but doesn’t want to tell her husband. Bitsy regrets dropping out of a college when her professor refused to write a letter of recommendation for veterinary school. Charlotte is stuck in a loveless marriage due to money. Until their book club, Charlotte saw them as stuck, “fellow inmates of the intellectual prison that is Concordia.”
I was angry when I read that Margaret couldn’t open a bank account without her husband’s signature. Viv’s husband needed to sign off at the doctor’s before she could go on the pill, although she was forty-one with six kids. It was the time of S&H Green Stamps. Panty hose was new. Women received household allowances, and certainly didn’t have jobs after the war.
At one point, Viv realizes they are four women from a class that does have choices, but they haven’t made choices. What about widows and divorces, single mothers and working women who didn’t have choices? She points out that they’re fighting for their place, but other women have no choices. “If women stuck up for one another the way men do, this would be a very different world.”
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique may have been a model for these women, but Bitsy and Margaret both find Katherine Graham of The Washington Post to be as inspiring. Graham points out to Bitsy that true friendships are rare and worth waiting for. And, she shows Margaret that women can, should, and do support each other.
The Book Club for Troublesome Women takes place in 1963, with an epilogue that seems appropriate, but a little light for a meaty book. In just that year, these four very different women discover what they have in common, and work for changes in their own lives. In a similar vein, but lighter, Lorna Landvik’s 2004 novel, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons introduced a group of women and their book club of forty years, and the changes they read about and experiences. Take your pick. I recommend both books.
Marie Bostwick’s website is https://mariebostwick.com/
The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick. Harper Muse, 2026. 384p.
FTC Full Disclosure – I received a galley from the publisher through NetGalley, with no promise of a positive review.
I remember when I was a kid, my mother going back to college to finish, but then dropping out again when she got pregnant with my youngest sister. I remember getting interested for the first time in Greek mythology, which was one of the courses she was taking. I read Edith Hamilton along with her. She also worked at times as a hostess at a restaurant in Midtown when we were in school.
But yes, I (being old) do remember that time. One thing not mentioned in your review was the fact that abortion was illegal. but it was definitely going on behind the scenes.
I did a quick summary of this book at my book tasting yesterday, Jeff. There were women in the group who are older than I am, and they brought up other topics including not being able to get credit cards. I don’t remember any of this, although I knew about the abortions and the other topics, but they weren’t in the book. And, they just make me angry. It also angers me watching men in government trying to take all of this away from women. I’m sorry your mother had to drop out.
I did call my Mom and ask her about this time. I turned six in 1963. But, my mother was one of those women content with her life, so she didn’t have any stories to share. Or, if she did have stories, she didn’t share them. She did love her job at the bank, but quit when she and my Dad moved when she was pregnant. She didn’t get a job outside of the house again until my youngest sister was in school.
Yes, I remember those times too. I remember going to Sears to apply for a charge card and being told that only my husband could open one. I was furious and never bought another thing from Sears. In high school, I was told that I needed to go to secretarial school because that was my only option. I graduated from high school in 1964 ,
Also, I remember staying up and reading ” The Feminine Mystique all night! I wasn’t finished when I went to I.U. in Bloomington, and a dorm resident saw me reading it. She was shocked and chewed me out for reading it! Later, she invited me to church and wow, the sermon was about how women have to submit to men.
Years later, I went to a counseling convention in LA and attended two lectures. The first one was by Alex Haley. He seemed very nervous, and I felt bad for him. The audience did not ask many questions. I felt like he was being snubbed.
The second one was with Betty Friedan; this time, the audience was all women. She was relaxed, and the audience was very warm toward her. I got to shake her hand and tell her with tears in my eyes, “Thank you for everything”.
Carol, Jackie says she was told she had three choices: teacher, nurse or secretary. She was a secretary before she got her teaching job. Her mother was a teacher, and later, so were both of her younger sisters. She really wanted to be a journalist or another kind of writer. (Medicine was out because she couldn’t stand the sight of blood!)
My mother was a bookkeeper, and loved it, Jeff. I’m sorry Jackie found that a journalist wasn’t an approved profession for a woman.
I don’t think it was that as much as a lack of self-confidence at the time. Plus, her mother didn’t exactly encourage her.
My sister is 10 years younger and she became a lawyer.
Then, that’s different, Jeff. Thank you.
Maybe not as awful as conditions in other cultures or in earlier times, Carol, but those incidents made me angry. Good for you for not buying anything from Sears. And, where does someone get off criticizing your reading? I can understand your reaction in church.
That is sad about Alex Haley. I’m glad you were able to get to see Betty Friedan and thank her.
Lesa. SO much I could say here. SO much. I read this book and what stayed in the back of my mind while reading it is something you said to your sister. ” . . . people are trying to take us back to 1963, so there were reasons to be angry about this book.”
It’s exhausting fighting this regime, but fight we must.
I thought of you, Kaye. I didn’t know you had read the book, but I could imagine some of your thoughts when you read it. Yes, it is exhausting just trying to keep up with the latest comments from this regime.
I loved this book and am leading it for my book group in August. I am surprised it hasn’t made a bigger splash, I think it is Bostwick’s break out book . I have never read the Feminine Mystique but plan to read it before book group.
I agree with you, Cindy. It’s the best I’ve read from her, and I’m sorry it hasn’t received more attention. I’m so glad you’re leading the discussion about it!
Lesa, I’m so glad you wrote about being angry! I recently read an article about far-right women saying they were happy to have only their husbands vote. It made me feel physically ill to think that anyone could blithely give up what was so hard-won. I almost stopped reading LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY by Bonnie Garmus because what happened to her during most of the book made me so angry. (I was glad I kept reading, but I was still angry at the end.)
My sister loved Lessons in Chemistry, Kim. Because I read reviews and she told me about it, I couldn’t bring myself to read it. It’s the same with women in the sciences and other professions when men take the credit. It makes me angry. I agree. I can’t believe those women are so willing to be doormats.
I get why you’re angry but I don’t see this as people “wanting to bring us back to the 60’s” insofar a idolizing the era. I see the setting and discussion about that era as more of a warning shot – showing us and reminding us what times were like and warning us not to go back and to not be taken advantage of NOW. Having said that, I look forward to reading this novel in part because of the times that it took place in if only that I’m reminded about how it was then.
Oh, I didn’t mean the author and the book wanted to take us back to those times, Melissa. That was a comment on the current state of politics, not those of the ’60s. Bostwick’s novel is a historical novel saying this is what it was like. I agree that it’s a warning.
I graduated high school in 1967 so much of the book was very familiar. I finished it in a single day and loved it.