I freaking love that dog. Six thirty is far and away my favorite thing about this book. I don’t usually like distant third person especially when it jumps, but Garmus made it work. I enjoyed this book, but I didn’t find it particularly riveting (as evidenced by the multiple long pauses between reading). This was more interesting to me after I read a few essays from Betty Friedan. The adding of historical context from Friedan helped to solidify for me exactly how steep a climb a woman would have had in the 1950s. It’s not that I didn’t know that woman had zero workplace protections, or that it wouldn’t be until the 1970s that a woman could have a bank account in her own name. The patriarchy had even more teeth then than it does today. It’s a time period that pisses me off so much that I’ve generally avoided books, movies, and shows set in that time (though I did watch Mad Men and often shouted at the TV while doing so). Garmus ripped down all of the rosy bullshit and really delivered a realistic look at what a woman would have endured if she went against norms.
I can’t say I enjoyed this book (and boy did I cry when the terrible thing happened about a third way through and when the super happy thing happened at the end), but I can say that I am glad I did and have even more respect for the women who came before us. I definitely would not have called the ambulance…