DAILY DEALS: Troubled women
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Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile $ 2.99
From the Jacket Copy:
Readers, booksellers, and critics alike are embracing Queen Sugar and cheering for its heroine, Charley Bordelon, an African American woman and single mother struggling to build a new life amid the complexities of the contemporary South.
When Charley unexpectedly inherits eight hundred acres of sugarcane land, she and her eleven-year-old daughter say goodbye to smoggy Los Angeles and head to Louisiana. She soon learns, however, that cane farming is always going to be a white man’s business. As the sweltering summer unfolds, Charley struggles to balance the overwhelming challenges of a farm in decline with the demands of family and the startling desires of her own heart.
Zelda by Nancy Milford $ 1.99
From the Jacket Copy:
Zelda Sayre started out as a Southern beauty, became an international wonder, and died by fire in a madhouse. With her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, she moved in a golden aura of excitement, romance, and promise. The epitome of the Jazz Age, they rode the crest of the era to its collapse and their own.
As a result of years of exhaustive research, Nancy Milford brings alive the tormented, elusive personality of Zelda and clarifies as never before her relationship with Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda traces the inner disintegration of a gifted, despairing woman, torn by the clash between her husband’s career and her own talent.
Rebel Love by Tess Oliver $ 0.99
From the Jacket Copy:
A passionate tale of unrequited love and second chances from New York Times bestselling author, Tess Oliver.
For a long time, I thought of that kiss, the kiss that unraveled everything, the kiss that changed the course of history, as a split second decision. But there was nothing split second about an obsession. And while she might have been impetuous and wild, there sure as hell wasn’t anything split second about Rebecca . . . the girl I called Rebel.
Rebel Love is a standalone romance.
Looker by Laura Sims $ 1.99
From the Jacket Copy:
I’ve never crossed their little fenced-in garden, of course. I stand on the sidewalk in front of the fern-and-ivy-filled planter that hangs from the fence—placed there as a sort of screen, I’m sure—and have a direct line of view into the kitchen at night. I’m grateful they’ve never thought to install blinds. That’s how confident they are. No one would dare stand in front of our house and watch us, they think. And they’re probably right: except for me.
In this taut and thrilling debut, an unraveling woman, unhappily childless and recently separated, becomes fixated on her neighbor—the actress. The unnamed narrator can’t help noticing with wry irony that, though she and the actress live just a few doors apart, a chasm of professional success and personal fulfillment lies between them. The actress, a celebrity with her face on the side of every bus, shares a gleaming brownstone with her handsome husband and their three adorable children, while the narrator, working in a dead-end job, lives in a run-down, three-story walk-up with her ex-husband’s cat.
When an interaction with the actress at the annual block party takes a disastrous turn, what began as an innocent preoccupation spirals quickly, and lethally, into a frightening and irretrievable madness. Searing and darkly witty, Looker is enormously entertaining—a psychologically suspenseful and fearlessly original portrait of the perils of envy.
Does anyone else find the description of The Looker to be frustratingly retrograde? As a single, childless woman in my thirties, it would be nice to read a thriller where the main protagonist, was NOT losing her mind due to her lack of spouse and child. As if there is no path left to a unmarried woman other than insanity and self destruction?
Maybe this wouldn’t be so frustrating if the trope wasn’t so damn prevalent in thrillers of recent years . . . Girl on the Train, Woman in the Window, Gone Girl, The Woman Upstairs, I can keep going but I’ll refrain.
Single women may be the last group our society is okay with caricaturing, shaming, and ostracizing.
So in the finale, do the villagers burn the childless spinster for being a witch?
@Liz: I’m twice your age, married and childless, and agree completely with your comment. First, we are infantilized with “girl.” Next, we’re re-packaged as “woman,” the subtext in both cases being we are alone/single/childless/obsessive, therefore we are deranged/unbalanced/the spark sitting on a powder keg.
Play Misty for Me. Fatal Attraction. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Misery. Young, old, alone, childless. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Sorry, I spent too much time this morning listen to men explaining catcalls to me and how women must be toxic because we can’t recognize a compliment when we hear one. Maybe the powder keg has a use, Liz, and we start with the village.
@Liz:
And God help her, she has a cat. Yep, she’s going to go insane.
I’ve got 4 cats, no human children and never married. I can hear them coming for me now ….
@Darlynne: Hey, I’ll ride shotgun with you to deliver the power keg.
@Jayne @Darlynne Thanks for letting me know I’m not alone! I think it’s just that this particular character trope has basically become is own subgenre as of late….. and for Pete’s sake give it a rest!
@Darlynne: Yes, I agree. Childless here too! I hated Fatal Attraction so much that I wrote a paper on how anti-feminist it was when I was in college. I’m glad I haven’t read any of those Girl and Woman thrillers except for the Stieg Larsson trilogy (those I was cool with).
And mansplaining catcalls. Ugh.
@Liz: It’s funny that I remembered and reread another version of the “childless woman” trope the other day when I was looking at asking for an arc to read. I knew I’d read one book by this author before and the outcome wasn’t good and when I read my review I remembered why. The heroine felt such pity for the childless female characters in the book and the one woman who didn’t want a child was turned into a gold digging tramp.
@Jayne: Someone needs to do a take down of this trope but I’m too infuriated to do it.