"The Eights," by Joanna Miller

"The Eights" (Putnam, 2025), Joanna Miller's first novel, is the story of four young women who are members of Oxford University's first class of women who can actually earn degrees there. The year is 1920, and though women have been allowed to attend classes before, this right to earn degrees is an historic breakthrough. These four women, like all the citizens of the UK, have just been through World War I and its aftermath. Some of them volunteered in the war effort in various ways; some lost brothers and sweethearts during the war. The four women reside in the same section of the living quarters at St. Hugh's College, a women's college at Oxford, and they become an inseparable foursome, a sort of sisterhood. Despite their closeness, though, they each have secrets that they do not share until they have known each other for quite a while. The novel weaves together the various strands affecting these young women: the postwar memories and atmosphere, the academic life, the forwarding of women's rights, friendship, ambitions, romance, and the secrets that they carry. As a (now retired) woman academic myself, I have seen how even in the past few decades, women students and professors have struggled, and are still struggling, more than 100 years since the time period of this book, to gain true equality; although the discrimination may be less blatant, it is still there. This novel is both informative on historical matters and enjoyable to read.