The Female Persuasion - A Novel

A New York Times Bestseller “A powerful coming-of-age story that looks at ambition, friendship, identity, desire, and power from the much-needed female lens." -- Bustle “Ultra-readable.” -- Vogue From the New York Times -bestselling author of The Interestings , comes an electric novel not just about who we want to be with, but who we want to be . To be admired by someone we admire--we all yearn for this: the private, electrifying pleasure of being singled out by someone of esteem. But sometimes it can also mean entry to a new kind of life, a bigger world. Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at sixty-three, has been a central pillar of the women’s movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world. Upon hearing Faith speak for the first time, Greer--madly in love with her boyfriend, Cory, but still full of longing for an ambition that she can’t quite place--feels her inner world light up. And then, astonishingly, Faith invites Greer to make something out of that sense of purpose, leading Greer down the most exciting path of her life as it winds toward and away from her meant-to-be love story with Cory and the future she’d always imagined. Charming and wise, knowing and witty, Meg Wolitzer delivers a novel about power and influence, ego and loyalty, womanhood and ambition. At its heart, The Female Persuasion is about the flame we all believe is flickering inside of us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time. It’s a story about the people who guide and the people who follow (and how those roles evolve over time), and the desire within all of us to be pulled into the light.

Report

"The novel could not be any more timely, even though its length and the completeness of its world suggest to me that it must have been conceived before the recent upheavals and protests. ... The Female Persuasion has gone straight into my library of favorite novels ever, on a shelf next to David Copperfield, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Lonesome Dove, and Love in the Time of Cholera." -Nick Hornby

"[The Female Persuasion's] subtle, powerfully ambivalent forays into second-wave feminism, the nature and limits of co-operative action and the intersection between the political and the personal function as depth charges whose ripples continue to rock our unstable little boats. It is a significant contribution to Wolitzer's body of work." -The Guardian

"The Female Persuasion is wonderfully dense and wise, a page-turner that succeeds both at character and ideas. It felt true to life." -Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"A great book featuring strong, complicated, interesting female characters." -Politico

"Meg Wolitzer's knowing novel about political awakening came at the right time." -People

"Surprises await both generations of women in this smart page-turner." -USA Today

"A dynamic, sprawling novel...Wolitzer has always been expert at capturing an emotion in a single image, and in this book she luxuriates in her skill." -The Atlantic

"Meg Wolitzer is the novelist we need right now...[The Female Persuasion is] the sort of book that comes along in too few authors' careers-one that makes the writer's intellectual project snap into sharp focus, and with it, the case that their artistry is not merely enjoyable but truly important." -The Washington Post

"[Wolitzer] writes in warm, specific prose that neither calls attention to itself nor ignores the mandate of the best books: to tell us things we know in ways we never thought to know them." -The New York Times Book Review

"Uncannily timely, a prescient marriage of subject and moment that addresses a great question of the day: how feminism passes down, or not, from one generation to the next." -The New York Times

"Wolitzer is an irresistibly charming novelist, a keen, affectionate examiner of society." -The New Yorker

"A wonderfully solid book, luxuriously long and varied in an almost 19th century kind of way." -NPR

"[Wolitzer is] old-fashioned in the best sense, a spiritual descendant of writers like Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë. Her novels blend philosophical matters with acute social commentary, grappling with ideas as robust as the characters she brings to life." -Wall Street Journal Magazine

"Wolitzer's social commentary can be as funny as it is queasily on target." -USA Today

"Wolitzer's narrative poses difficult questions about feminism using an approach that is direct, generous, and, most importantly, not presuming there is one correct answer. A work of imagination and intelligence that deserves a wide readership." -Los Angeles Review of Books

"Wolitzer's talent as a writer shines in lines that say more in a sentence than most writers do in paragraphs...One can only hope that her readers - of the male and female persuasion - will keep the conversation going after the last page." -Associated Press

"Wolitzer's ultra-readable latest illuminates the oceanic complexity of growing up female and ambitious-and reveals the author's substantial insight into the tangles of gender and power." -Vogue

"It takes readers to that sweet spot where fiction mirrors reality . . . Filled with lighthearted moments and romantic detours, it's equal parts cotton candy and red meat, in the best way." -People

"[Wolitzer is] a keen humanist with a singular gift for social observation." -Entertainment Weekly

"Big, necessary, and utterly persuasive." -The Boston Globe

"Wolitzer's engrossing new novel, The Female Persuasion, is something of a rebel yell, slapping gender right in the title and confronting the question, What does a feminist look li

Product details

• Authors: Meg Wolitzer
• Publisher: Riverhead
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.04.2018
• EAN: 9780525535058
• ISBN: 978-0-525-53505-8
• No. of pages: 456
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 228 mm x 29 mm
• Series: 181 GRAND; 181 GRAND
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature