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Jul 23, 2018liljables rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
I enjoyed Wolitzer's last adult novel, The Interestings, but I didn't loooove it, so I picked this one up with some trepidation, and I was pleasantly surprised. Much like The Interestings, The Female Persuasion is very much character driven, but I connected more immediately with the "cast" of the latter novel. (It doesn't hurt that Greer is my exact age and we have very similar sensibilities.) Wolitzer reminds the reader that we can still learn a lot from previous generations of feminists while picking up the loose threads left hanging by earlier "versions" of the movement (race, class, and sexual orientation come to mind). The Female Persuasion is very much a portrait of a white, straight, middle-class feminist, of whom we have a surplus in popular culture; the difference here is that Greer is continually aware of her privilege and works that much harder to support other women because of it.