The Book Club for Troublesome Women
An Interview with Marie Bostwick
This week I’m sharing a Q&A with Marie Bostwick, author of The Book Club for Troublesome Women a new must-read novel about a group of women in a 1960s suburb whose lives are changed after reading The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.
And what a great name! I’m going to need The Book Club for Troublesome Women on a t-shirt.
“Touching, timely, and introspective…While the novel is set in 1963, it is incredibly relevant to today’s women who are expected to work like they don’t have a family and run a home like they don’t have a job.”—bestselling author Sara Goodman Confino
The Book Club for Troublesome Women has to be my favorite book title of the year! What led you to centering the novel around women reading The Feminine Mystique?
Thank you! I truly believe it’s my best work to date. And it all came about because of a conversation that took place about three years ago, with my then 89-year old mom.
Mom is sharp as a tack and an avid reader. We were talking about books one evening when the conversation turned to Betty Friedan’s 1963 blockbuster, The Feminine Mystique, which many have credited as a catalyst for second-wave feminism. “I don’t know if I ever told you,” Mom said, “but that book changed my life.”
Naturally, I wanted to hear more.
As soon as Mom started explaining what Friedan’s book had meant to her and her friends, a group of quietly unhappy housewives who supposedly “had it all” and couldn’t understand why they still felt so empty inside, I knew what I had to write next.
What do you think would surprise (or infuriate!) women most about this very recent period in our history?
The fact that so many of the rights and opportunities modern women take as a given simply didn’t exist just sixty short years ago. For example…
Married couples weren’t legally guaranteed the right to contraception until 1965, a right not extended to unmarried people until 1972. Up until 1974, women could be excluded from juries on the basis of sex.
That same year, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act finally said companies could no longer discriminate on the basis of sex or marital status, or require a woman to have a male co-signer to apply for a credit card or loan. Guaranteeing the same to female entrepreneurs took until 1988. That was when the Women’s Business Ownership Act ended state laws requiring women to have a male relative as a co-signer for business loans.
When I tell younger women this, their eyes tend to widen with disbelief. But it’s all true. The freedoms we take for granted were unknown to our mothers and grandmothers.
In an interview with Cathy Lamb you said, "As it turned out, being the fourth girl in a family headed by a single mom was the ideal atmosphere for raising a writer." How did your childhood shape your path to becoming a writer?
Though I don’t think she pursued this intentionally, my mom was a phenomenal role model. She’s a practical optimist, someone who is always willing to take a chance on a good idea. Optimism doesn’t come as naturally to me, but that kind of confidence tends to rub off. She taught me to place more weight on opportunity than obstacles.
Because she was our sole breadwinner and energetically trying to turn all those good ideas into reality, Mom was incredibly busy, too busy to coddle kids or be a helicopter parent. That meant I had a lot of freedom, which turns out to be a very good thing for a writer. You can’t really write about life unless you’ve experienced it.
My sisters were part of the equation too. Nearly all of my central characters are women. Being raised in a family of four girls meant I had the opportunity to observe just about every aspect of the female experience in close quarters.
What advice would you give to other historical fiction writers?
The same that I would give to any writer, in any genre – write the stories you’re excited about, the ideas that keep bubbling up in your brain and waking you up in the middle of the night. If you’re fascinated by an idea, there’s a good chance that readers will feel the same way.
In this moment, when women's rights are under attack, what nonfiction book do you think is essential reading to rally today's "troublesome women"? (Today’s Feminine Mystique.)
I’m not sure there is anything out there right now that can resonate with this generation the way that The Feminine Mystique resonated with our mothers and grandmothers. Now, it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong about this; I don’t read nearly as much nonfiction as fiction, so maybe there is such a book and I’ve missed it. But I haven’t come across anything that packs quite the same punch.
Which is not to say that there aren’t some excellent books on feminist topics out there. Two sharp, insightful, sometimes witty collections of essays that I recommend are Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay and Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit.
About the Author: Marie Bostwick is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than twenty works of uplifting contemporary and historical fiction. Translated into a dozen languages, Marie’s novels are beloved by readers across the globe. Her 2009 book, A Thread of Truth, was an “Indie Next Notable” pick. Three of her books were published as Reader's Digest “Select Editions.” Marie lives in Washington state with her husband and a beautiful but moderately spoiled Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Connect with her online at mariebostwick.com.
The Book Club for Troublesome Women will release on 4-22. I hope you get your pre-orders in today!
Oh I can't wait to read this! I loved this line: "She taught me to place more weight on opportunity than obstacles." Great interview!