Read in July 2013
Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
Three Stars
Gone Girl is a novel whose status as a bestseller is well-justified. It is intricately plotted and unfolds suspensefully from first to last. For that reason, I gave the book three stars. But I had two huge problems with the novel. First, the novel and the story it tells rely on gimmicks, and even when the manipulation is done as well as Flynn does it here, I still resent it. Second, I disliked all of the characters in this novel and read to the end ONLY to see how Flynn would pull it all together. A big literary debate in 2013 has centered on likeable characters, with the writers of “serious” fiction implying that readers who want a character they can like are too light-weight to be worth listening to and writers of bestselling fiction suggesting that literary lions who cling to unlikeable characters shouldn’t bemoan their lack of commercial success. For me the bottom line on this is simple: There are far too many great novels out there about characters I’ll care about that I’ll never live long enough to read to waste my time with characters I dislike, however great the writing.
Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg
Four Stars
Some early reviewers knocked Sandberg’s book as elitist because she does not discuss the problems experienced by poor and low-income women. But that was a bad rap because Sandberg is quite clear in her thesis: Before you can have a country (and a world) that provides serious attention and solutions to the concerns of women and children — improvements in health care, education, child care, family leave — you have to have more women leading governments and corporations. Lean In is Sandberg’s analysis of the reasons women haven’t achieved leadership parity with men (because given a choice between having a family and having power, many women choose family) and her prescription for achieving leadership parity (women should lean in to their professional aspirations right up until the moment when they must lean back in order to have a family.) Sandberg’s key insight is that women lean back from their careers long before they actually need to — when they’re just thinking about having children rather than after those children actually arrive. If those women continue to lean in, Sandberg suggests that they may find that when the time comes for family, they may not actually have to lean back, either because they’ve achieved enough power to successfully juggle career and family or because enough women have become government and corporate leaders that the climate of professional life has become more family friendly. And while Sandberg clearly is hoping that those who lean in will develop a taste for power, she does not denigrate those who choose family, wisely endorsing the longstanding feminist goal of providing choices for all women. Although this book is clearly aimed at professional women, many of Sandberg’s insights can prove useful to any woman in the workplace. For example, she notes that men apply for jobs when they have around 50 percent of the posted skill requirements while women don’t apply unless they have 90 percent. Also, men are more likely to ask for a raise then women, and when they do, men generally ask for more money than their female colleagues. However, Sandberg’s insights for professional women are often invaluable. For example, when faced with high child-care costs that almost wipe out a working mother’s income, Sandberg advises viewing those lost dollars as an investment in future earnings. Professional women who drop out of the work force for a few years will never be able to catchup to that lost income, which in professional circles can be huge. For that and other advice relevant to any woman embarking on a professional career, Sandberg’s book is a must-read for 20- and 30-something women.