A Short History of Women, Kate Walbert
A Short History of Women, Kate Walbert
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A Short History of Women

Author: Kate Walbert

Narrator: Ruth Moore, Paula Parker, Eliza Foss

Unabridged: 8 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/28/2010


Synopsis

The novel opens in England in 1915, at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragist and one of the first women to integrate Cambridge University. Her decision to starve herself for the cause informs and echoes in the later, overlapping narratives of her descendants. Among them are her daughter Evie, who becomes a professor of chemistry at Barnard College in the middle of the century and never marries, and her granddaughter Dorothy Townsend Barrett, who focuses her grief over the loss of her son by repeatedly defying the ban on photographing the bodies of dead soldiers returned to Dover Air Force base from Iraq. The contemporary chapters chronicle Dorothy Barrett’s girls, both young professionals embarrassed by their mother’s activism and baffled when she leaves their father after fifty years of marriage.

Walbert deftly explores the ways in which successive generations of women have attempted to articulate what the nineteenth century called “the woman question.” Her novel is a moving reflection on the tides of history, and how the lives of our great-grandmothers resonate in our own.

About Kate Walbert

Kate Walbert is the author of seven works of fiction: She Was Like That, longlisted for the Story Prize and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; His Favorites, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of the Year; The Sunken Cathedral; A Short History of Women, a New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of the Year and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Our Kind, a National Book Award finalist; The Gardens of Kyoto; and the story collection Where She Went. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize stories. She lives with her family in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David on December 31, 2009

This book was handed me by my wife who had read a review in the NY Times. While it was well and very lyrically written, I could not really come to understand why the author had written it and what she had hoped we would gain through its reading. So I asked my wife and she said that she was not surpr......more

Goodreads review by Kathrina on March 31, 2011

This was hugely underwhelming; a nice writing style, but an utterly forgettable narrative. "A Short History of..." is a trend in titles over the last few years, perhaps borrowing from the popularity of Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, a book that pays back its promise of a layman's rum......more

Goodreads review by Jeff on April 20, 2009

A Short History of Women is an eloquent and lovely novel that begins at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragette who starves herself and, ultimately, dies to further her cause. Kate Walbert’s novel is not simply about the repercussions of Dorothy’s death, though, but rather about how her acti......more

Goodreads review by Ruth on November 12, 2012

I grabbed this paperback for a long flight (China), thinking that I could jettison it easily on the way home. A few pages in, I realized I would not want to get rid of the book and would make room for it somehow on the return flight. I tend to enjoy novels that go back and forth in time, and this bo......more

Goodreads review by Jackie on March 16, 2009

This new novel by renowned author Kate Walbert gives us glimpses into the lives of 5 related women over four generations. It begins in England in 1914 when Dorothy Townsend chooses to starve herself to death in the name of women's suffrage, leaving her two children orphaned. So begins the legacy of......more