Skip to main content
  Log In
Menu
Displaying 1 of 1
The book club for troublesome women : a novel
Book
2025
Google Books Preview
Add to My List  
Share
Copies Available
Tags, Other Editions, Similar Titles
Large Cover Image
Trade Reviews
Library Journal Review
Bostwick's (Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly) latest explores the lives of four housewives in 1963 suburban Virginia. Margaret, Viv, and Bitsy are living the American dream. However, "having it all" leaves them feeling guilty and wondering if there should be more to their lives than just domesticity. Enter Charlotte, their arty, fashionable, and eccentric new neighbor from New York City. These four women start a book club, with The Feminine Mystique as their first title, a controversial and groundbreaking book that inspires each of them to examine their own lives, illustrating why they each feel pressured, unhappy, and unfulfilled. Through their discussions of other books, they form an unbreakable bond and encourage one another not only to acknowledge their fears and dreams but also to seek change to make their longings a reality. VERDICT Bostwick's latest is ideal for fans of historical fiction and those who enjoyed Bonnie Garmus's Lessons in Chemistry, Kristin Hannah's The Women, or Kate Quinn's The Briar Club, which explore the historical roles of women and the challenges they faced within a society structured to define and limit their roles in and out of the home.--Linsey Milillo
Booklist Review
Margaret Ryan has the perfect early1960s life--she has a brand-new house in a planned suburb in Virginia, three children, and a husband who works hard to provide for the family. And yet, she has a nagging sense that there is more to life. Her best friend, Viv, is a mother of six and, while she loves being a mother, she sometimes misses the excitement and fulfillment she had as a nurse during WWII. Bitsy is a young newlywed, married to an older man. Marge, after meeting an unconventional new neighbor, Charlotte, decides to start a book club. Charlotte only agrees to join if she can pick the book, the newly published (and controversial) Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan. Their first meeting shows each of these women that their longing for more is not unique to them, and the Bettys are born. Over the course of one year, these four women bond, grow, and forge lifelong friendships. Bostwick (Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly, 2023) has written another charming, winning novel, perfect for those who love book clubs, nostalgia for the 1960s, and stories of female friendship.
Kirkus Review
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963. Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan--married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends--decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She's thinkingA Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan's brand-newThe Feminine Mystique. They're joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women's magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like theWashington Post's Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book's been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick's spunky characters. A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Summary


USA TODAY BESTSELLER · SOUTHERN INDIE BESTSELLER · A BRENDA NOVAK BOOK GROUP PICK · GLOSS BOOK CLUB PICK · THE GIRLFRIEND BOOK CLUB PICK · A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 (SheReads) · Margaret never really meant to start a book club . . . or a feminist revolution, for that matter in this bold and plucky novel from New York Times bestselling author Marie Bostwick.

"Ideal for fans of historical fiction and those who enjoyed Bonnie Garmus's Lessons in Chemistry." --Library Journal, starred review

"Readers will cheer." --Kirkus

"Perfect for those who love book club, nostalgia for the 1960s, and stories of female friendship." --Booklist

"A feel-good beach read with . . . elements that spark a revolution." --Southern Review of Books

By 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan is living the American woman's dream. She has a husband, three children, a station wagon, and a home in Concordia--one of Northern Virginia's most exclusive and picturesque suburbs. She has a standing invitation to the neighborhood coffee klatch, and now, thanks to her husband, a new subscription to A Woman's Place--a magazine that tells housewives like Margaret exactly who to be and what to buy. On paper, she has it all. So why doesn't that feel like enough

Margaret is thrown for a loop when she first meets Charlotte Gustafson, Concordia's newest and most intriguing resident. As an excuse to be in the mysterious Charlotte's orbit, Margaret concocts a book club get-together and invites two other neighborhood women--Bitsy and Viv--to the inaugural meeting. As the women share secrets, cocktails, and their honest reactions to the controversial bestseller The Feminine Mystique, they begin to discover that the American dream they'd been sold isn't all roses and sunshine--and that their secret longing for more is something they share. Nicknaming themselves the Bettys, after Betty Friedan, these four friends have no idea their impromptu club and the books they read together will become the glue that helps them hold fast through tears, triumphs, angst, and arguments--and what will prove to be the most consequential and freeing year of their lives.

The Book Club for Troublesome Women is a humorous, thought provoking, and nostalgic romp through one pivotal and tumultuous American year--as well as an ode to self-discovery, persistence, and the power of sisterhood.

Librarian's View
Displaying 1 of 1