"A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again," by Joanna Biggs

Readers can see why I would choose to read “A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again” (Ecco, 2023), by Joanna Biggs: It is a combination of literary discussion of eight famous and outstanding women writers with Biggs’ making connections with her own life and work (thus she takes the position of the ninth writer included in the title, which sounds presumptuous, but is done in a humble way). The writers’ lives and work are the main focus, but the author’s own experiences provide a kind of bridge between readers and the eight famed writers. I know you will want to know which writers are the focus of the book; they are Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and Elena Ferrante. I have read and admired and treasured each of these writers. Readers might wonder about the “begin again” part of the subtitle. In each case, the writer went through some kind of difficulty or obstacle, whether physical, financial, marital, mental, emotional, or otherwise, while working her way toward writing, and managed to transcend that obstacle. This focus was a good reminder that for so long, women were not encouraged to be writers, and women writers had so much less support in writing than men did. Although I already knew quite a bit about each of the eight writers, I still found much to learn and think about. I savored the book, even loved it, as it offered such wonderful insights into the specific writers, their lives and their work, and to the situations of women writers more generally, historically and still.

"Tom Lake," by Ann Patchett

Oh, Ann Patchett! She is such a genius, such an amazing writer! Yet she does it with seeming ease, and with such grace. I have treasured all her books, fiction and nonfiction, but most especially her novels. My posts on her books include those of 9/19/11, 12/8/13, 11/6/16, 3/22/18, 11/15/19, and 3/31/22 (you can also always use the small search bar in the upper lefthand corner of this blogpage). Patchett also co-owns and operates an independent bookstore, Parnassus Books, in Nashville, Tennessee – brava for that! Her brand-new novel, “Tom Lake” (Harper, 2023) is a terrific addition to her fiction. When I heard Patchett was about to publish this novel, and that it involved family, youth, middle age and aging, dreams that evolve, how we figure out what is really important in life, and the power of theater, among other themes, I was first in line to buy a copy. And the fact that it was set in cherry country in northern Michigan, very near to the area of my parents’ former lakeside cottage, where I spent many weeks over many summers, I was even more eager to read the novel. It did not let me down. The novel goes back and forth between the past and the present of its main character, Lara. In the present, during the pandemic when many of the usual workers are gone, she and her husband and their three daughters in their twenties are picking cherries on their cherry farm. Partly to pass the time while picking, Lara’s daughters are eager to hear the story of their mother’s youthful experiences acting in a summer stock theater nearby, at Tom Lake. They are especially interested to hear about her romance with an actor who later became very famous. Thornton Wilder’s play, “Our Town,” has a big role in this story. Lara played that play's character Emily in high school, in college, and at Tom Lake. Her daughters are also curious about why Lara quit acting, and if she ever regrets it. Each of the daughers is, of course, also figuring out what is important in her own life, and on some level is looking for clues in her mother's story. During the weaving of the past and present throughout the novel, we readers are as eager as Lara’s daughters are to find out what happened. But as with all of Patchett’s novels, although the plot is very compelling, equally compelling are the portraits of the characters and of their relationships, and the connections between the past and the present in all of their lives. I thoroughly admired and enjoyed “Tom Lake,” and (as you can tell by now!) I highly recommend it.