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I missed September. I know. Apologies — I was neck deep in driving classes and exams. But I’m back, and I thought to make up for it, I’d do an extra long list for October: first, the usual reads, and a second list of spooky reads from women to celebrate the best month of the year.
Three Women
Lisa Taddeo
2019
Non-fiction
To write this book, Lisa Taddeo followed and chronicled the lives of three American women over the span of nearly a decade. It’s a rare glimpse into the private struggles and desires of ordinary women who are dealing with past traumas, frustrated hopes, and the way the world receives them (and rejects them) based on their gender. There’s a polished restaurant owner whose husband has a cuckold fetish, a neglected housewife and mother who reconnects with a high school flame and is faced with the decision of whether or not to re-explore her romanticized past at the risk of losing her lackluster — but stable — present, and a high school student who has an affair with a trusted teacher, and then grows up to realize that he wasn’t so trustworthy after all. Three very different women with very different struggles, but they dovetail at interesting points, demonstrating the tension between female desire and the expectations that are hoisted upon women.
