The Odd Woman - Softcover

Godwin, Gail

3.49

414 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140082212 ISBN 13: 9780140082210

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1985

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"HER BEST BOOK SO FAR....[It is] one of the most literate, intelligent and powerful novels I have ever read."
--Eugenia Thornton
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Professor Jane Clifford is in her early thirties, smart, and attractive. A popular teacher at a midwestern college, she appears to be going somewhere. But Jane knows better. After a lifetime habit of looking to books for the answers to life's mysteries, she seems to be finding only more questions.
Then her beloved grandmother suddenly dies, and Jane returns home for the funeral, where she is faced with the little dramas and fictions of both the past she has lived and the past she has only been told about. In the midst of it all, she is considering breaking off a long-term, long-distance affair, but like the family stories she tries to make sense of, she cannot seem to find a reason to claim a life of her own....
"PROVOCATIVE...The Odd Woman is an ambitious and intricately developed novel....One of the most realistic, intelligent and skillful character studies of a contemporary woman to date....Godwin is an extraordinarily good writer....She is a shrewd observer of human sensibilities and shortcomings--particularly those of women--and she explores them in depth with sensitivity, wit and an uncanny eye for the truth."
--Chicago Sun-Times

"EXCITING AND AFFIRMATIVE...It is a privilege to watch the unfolding of her impressive talent."
--Minneapolis Tribune

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About the Author:

Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of twelve critically acclaimed novels, including A Mother and Two Daughters, Violet Clay, Father Melancholy’s Daughter, Evensong, The Good Husband, Queen of the Underworld, and Unfinished Desires. She is also the author of The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961–1963 and The Making of a Writer, Volume 2: Journals, 1963–1969, edited by Rob Neufeld. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has written libretti for ten musical works with the composer Robert Starer. Gail Godwin lives in Woodstock, New York.

Review:

Jane is a thirty-two-year-old professor of English at a Midwestern university, aware of her "ever present problem of her unclear, undefined, unresolved self." She considers characters and authors from nineteenth-century novels as friends and converses with them, wondering how they might react, what they might choose, how they might define Jane in their novels. The death of her staunchly supportive grandmother, Edith, brings Jane home to bury this woman whose influence feels almost bigger than life. Edith, proper and always knowing, never seemed to consider the questions that constantly haunt Jane. Kitty, Edith's daughter and Jane's mother, who recently turned to God, has become "so serene, so distant." Even Gerta, Jane's "oldest" friend, now driven by feminist zeal, leaves Jane wondering if history is all they have in common. And Gabriel, Jane's married lover - what does he provide in her life, where is the truth in that relationship? Jane has thoughts that are "flying wildly abroad, knocking one another down, flinging themselves against impenetrable windows, barriers of other times, other places" - thoughts that demand her time and attention as she remembers Edith, talks with Kitty, confronts Gerta, and allows herself to be honest about Gabriel. Odd Woman is an introspective romp; it may make you want to re-read nineteen-century novels, review your own relationships, and reaffirm your own truths. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith

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