Sunday Book Review – Well Behaved Wives by Amy Sue Nathan

My Sunday book review is for Amy Sue Nathan’s – Well Behaved Wives. This book takes place in the early 60s where most women were coming into themselves and waking up for and beginning to stand up for their equal rights. But there are many places where that kind of ambition and talk is just nonsense. Ruth Applebaum is the main character and will have you cheering for her all through the facade she must keep up, hiding her true ambition.

This book is available on Amazon

Blurb:

Perfect wives, imperfect lives, and upending the rules of behavior in 1960s America.

Law school graduate and newlywed Ruth Appelbaum is acclimating to life and marriage in a posh Philadelphia neighborhood. She’ll do almost anything to endear herself to her mother-in-law, who’s already signed up Ruth for etiquette lessons conducted by the impeccably accessorized tutor Lillian Diamond. But Ruth brings something fresh to the small circle of housewives—sharp wit, honesty, and an independent streak that won’t be compromised.

Right away Ruth develops a friendship with the shy Carrie Blum. When Carrie divulges a dark and disturbing secret lurking beneath her seemingly perfect life, Ruth invites Lillian and the Diamond Girls of the etiquette school to finally question the status quo.

Together they form an unbreakable bond and stretch well beyond their comfort zones. For once, they’ll challenge what others expect from them, discover what they expect from themselves, and do whatever it takes to protect one of their own—fine manners be damned.

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My 5 Star Review:

This story is set in mid-upper class suburb of Wynnefield, Philadelphia, early 1960s. This is where Ruth has moved to with her newlywed husband Asher after she graduated law school in New York and eloped with Asher. They are living with Asher’s parents Shirley and Leon, with the secret that Ruth is a liberal woman who is studying for the bar exam, and decide not to tell Asher’s parents because his pushy mother Shirley expects Ruth to be an obedient, good Jewish wife and be subservient to her husband.

Shirley decides to send Ruth to her friend Lillian’s private housewife etiquette school at her home where a small group of girls learn how to become the perfect wives, shop, cook, clean, have babies, praise their husbands, and of course, after a day’s work, make sure they get changed into fancy dresses and put on make-up to greet their husbands when they return from a hard day’s work at the office, complete with a cocktail in hand upon their return – almost Madmen-esque. Except Ruth is a sharp and educated young woman and has seen and dealt with things growing up and living in New York that this group of girls she meets are oblivious to – until they become woke.

Ruth came from a family where women were treated equally and she lost her mother at four years old. She is forward thinking for the times. She didn’t want to upset the apple cart by sharing her becoming a lawyer intentions with anyone, until she befriends a few girls in the etiquette class and reveals her education to one of them. These girls also went to college, but not so much for the education, but to snag a husband. Ruth also volunteered to help abused women while back in New York, and somehow observes that there is indeed abuse going on in high society where she now lives, which isn’t exposed, nor believed around the good family value circles she’s now living among. The other girls in her group are Carrie, still childless with a secret, Irene who was made to give up her nursing career once married, and now has four young kids, and Harriet, newly engaged to be married, and both envious and curious about Ruth’s ambition.

Through the story we learn that Lillian’s seemingly perfect life isn’t as fulfilling as she wishes it could be Lillian could have had a career too, she comes to realize, once she learns how independent Ruth is. We can sympathize with Lillian, despite how she comes off at first as ‘Miss Manners’, as we get to know more about her sad childhood that comes to light in conversations, discovering she was raised by her grandparents because her mother was put in an institution when Lillian was only eleven and her father was dead. Until one day, Lillian discovers an old photo of herself with her parents, which compels her to go visit her institutionalized mother – with said, dementia, to see if the picture stirs anything of recognition – then a whole new kettle of fish is discovered – and a terrible secret exposed about what caused her mother to be institutionalized.

Ruth’s husband is crazy about her but keeps putting off the time to share Ruth’s ambitions with his parents. Ruth befriends one of the girls in particular and shares her secret that she has graduated law school and studying for the bar. She suspects this friend is being physically abused by her husband, but the girl denies it and makes excuses for her husband and tries to shut Ruth out of her life, afraid to cause trouble. But Ruth instinctively wants to help her, because it’s part of who she is and what she does – defend powerless women. Later in the book the women are forced to confront the realism of domestic abuse and many secrets of the past are revealed about Lillian and Shirley’s past, and secret lives.

This story takes on many issues about women back in the early 60s. Society dictates what’s expected of them, but some have a voice and go against the norm. Spousal abuse in an upper class surburbia just couldn’t be possible. Respectable men with important jobs would never abuse their wives, would they? And awakenings stir on the topic of mental health, which back in those days didn’t take much to have a woman committed for hysteria or any other dispicable label they could place on one to have them certifiably locked up because their men declared them so.

This book was a time capsule about the place of women back in the early 60s, a nod to how far we’ve come since then, but then again, how much further we have yet to go. I enjoyed this book so much – the characters, the issues, and the development of these ‘Diamond’ girls who learned to take their power. The writing was beautiful, and I should look forward to reading more from this author. At the end of the book, the author offers many resources for abused women to seek help. I’ll definitely be reading more from this author.

©DGKaye2022

Sunday Movie Review – #Documentary – Lady Boss, Jackie Collins

Welcome to my Sunday Movie Review. When I came across this doc about the life and career of best selling, unconventional author, Jackie Collins – younger sister to the actress Joan Collins, I knew I had to watch it. From her agent, Morton Janklow, “Some authors use their words so eloquently – and Jackie isn’t one of them.”

 

Jackie Collins

 

I was hooked on Collins’ books since the eighties. I didn’t realize she began publishing her first book in 1967 – The World is Full of Married Men, and readers both, loved and hated her. Collins wrote boldly of the world she did research in – her sister’s world of hollywood and their sins and secrets. She transformed her research into many books, a simple formula – she based her stories on real life people and called it fiction. How could we as writers, possibly not incorporate some of ourselves and observances into our writing?

Jackie wrote revolutionary novels placing female sexuality at the heart of her stories.

I could identify with so much of Jackie’s life – both personally and as a writer. And in those roaring 80s, I throughly enjoyed reading many of her books – especially the Lucky, Lady Boss series.

 

 

My 5 Star Review:

This was a wonderful documentary on the life of controversial author, Jackie Collins. Jackie was the younger sister of the famous Joan Collins. Joan was a natural beauty, and Jackie was not. Their father was in the entertainment business and wasted no time getting his pretty daughter Joan into movies. Jackie, more plain looking was happy to scribble writings about all she observed. Jackie seemed the underdog to her sister who had all the fame and fuss around her, but Jackie loved her sister and was thrilled to be invited to all the Hollywood parties her sister invited her to. This is when Jackie realized that her ‘scribbles’ could take on some serious meaning if she wrote books about Hollywood stars with all the gossip and information she garnered by becoming part of her sister’s circles. She preferred to call those outings – research.

Jackie’s women were all strong women in her books. Her writing began to empower housewives who were reading her books since the late 60s where sex talk was still taboo – for the most part. Her stories were rally calls for women to wake up and be all they can be. Many women fans adored her, while many others shunned her publicly when she was doing the talk show circuit. They bashed her for her raw smut, as many liked to call it. But Jackie stood her ground and continued to write for the millions of fans who did appreciate her candor. Many male writers felt threatened by her bold sex stories.

Jackie turned her plain old self into her own branding. Hanging out with the Hollywood crowd inspired her to fix her nose and have a little face construction. She began wearing sassy and bold clothes and did a lot of marketing her books on her own to gain momentum and brand herself as a strong, powerful woman. She was married three times – once to her first abusive husband that she empowered herself to leave in the middle of the night, while inspiring many other women to get out of abusive relationships.

Her second marriage to Oscar was the spark in her life. Til that point, Jackie had written numerous books she started and abandoned. Oscar pushed her to finish just one book, and the rest was history. He was her biggest supporter and loved her unconditionally. Jackie had kept a diary of much of her life – a treasure trove of life that became weaved into all her books.

Collins protested that men shouldn’t think they are the only ones to write about sex and love scenes. One of her best selling series was Lady Boss, where Lucky Santangelo was the lead strong woman. Her background stemmed from her mafia father Gino Santangelo. This series was all made into movies. Juicy movies I might add. Jackie’s husband Oscar adored her and dubbed her, the Harold Robbins of women.

In the late 80s, at the height of her fame, Oscar was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He chose not to tell anyone and knowing he was on borrowed time wanted to leave his wife a beautiful legacy home and began building it. Sadly, it was Jackie and her kids who ultimately moved into it as Oscar didn’t live through the completion. Jackie kept up face on camera, but she was devastated by the loss of her beloved husband.

By the time the 90s rolled around, people’s attitudes were changing about women’s rights and sexual freedom. Jackie lived in her beautiful house and kept her nose to the grindstone writing to fill her empty broken heart.

Somehow, Jackie met a third husband, which nobody approved of. Her own daughters (who were narrating the documentary), questioned why she would marry such an ill-tempered and abusive man. Frank was relentless trying to win over Jackie’s affections. Sadly, she couldn’t ‘read between the lines’ and found herself trapped with a bully. But as karma made it, a few years later Frank died from brain cancer. Jackie assured everyone she would never marry again.

Jackie’s mother died of cancer, and her first husband wound up committing suicide. And not long after the last two husbands passed, Jackie herself detected a lump in her breast and decided not to do a damn thing about it – no treatments to ravage whatever time she had left. Jackie wrote feverently, writing her own ending her own way. Jackie lived six more years after being diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer and having no treatments, as well as telling nobody. Until two weeks before her death, she finally told her sister Joan. Born October 4th, 1937, Jackie died on September 19th, 2015, two weeks before her 78th birthday.

 

From her agent, Morton Janklow: “Jackie was a great storyteller, and that’s better than being a great writer.”

Author Dominick Dunne: “And although she was a “great partygoer”, he says, she went to them “more as an observer than participant”, using them as part of her research.”

“Write about what you know”, Collins said at a writer’s conference. “I love what I do. I fall in love with my characters. They become me, and I become them.”

Collins fictionalized parts of her own life to construct her Hollywood stories.

Jackie wrote 32 books and sold over 500 million copies! Eight of her books were turned into movies and miniseries. She did play in some small acting roles in the 50s, but writing was in her veins.

 

Read more about Jackie’s life on her website.

You can watch a short clip here from Jackie.

Visit Jackie’s author page and many books.

 

©DGKaye2021

 

Sunday Movie Review -The Glorias – #Feminism – #Docu-Drama – Gloria Steinem

Welcome to my special edition of Sunday Movie Reviews. I try to have a book read a week so I can share my reviews and introduce you to books you may be interested in – plus reviews are always a great thing to do for fellow authors. But as life isn’t always predictable and doesn’t permit my finishing on time, I like to share Movie Reviews in lieu of. I only post movies that draw me in and captivate – good subject matter plus good acting. This week’s movie I’m sharing is a well-done biographic movie, tastefully done as a biopic docudrama including some live footage – The Glorias – the life of Gloria Steinem and the beginnings of her rise to infamous feminist, excellently portrayed by actress Julienne Moore as the older Gloria and three other actresses portraying her younger years.

 

 

My review is for the movie, but I’m sharing the book here – My Life on the Road for those interested in reading some Steinem. I think I will get this book too.

If you click on the ‘buy’ link, you can scroll down  to the author bio and click ‘read more’. There is a copyrighted ‘excerpt’ of the book which plays out very close to how the movie was depicted, how the movie began with Gloria and her poor family, her love for her father and the sadness about her mother.

 

About the Author

Gloria Marie Steinem, born March 25th, 1934, is a writer, lecturer, editor, feminist, and political activist. In 1972, she co-founded Ms. magazine, and she remained one of its editors for fifteen years. In 1968, she helped found New York magazine, where she was a political columnist and wrote feature articles. Her books include the bestsellers Revolution from Within, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Moving Beyond Words, Marilyn: Norma Jeane, and As if Women Matter (published in India). Steinem has received the Penney-Missouri Journalism Award, the Front Page and Clarion awards, the National Magazine Award, the Women’s Sports Journalism Award, the Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of Writers Award from the United Nations, the James Weldon Johnson Award for Journalism, and many others. In 2013, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
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Blurb:

Gloria Steinem—writer, activist, organizer, and inspiring leader—now tells a story she has never told before, a candid account of her life as a traveler, a listener, and a catalyst for change. Includes “Secrets,” a new chapter!

When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel. Taking to the road—by which I mean letting the road take you—changed who I thought I was. The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial and into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into stories—in short, out of our heads and into our hearts.

Gloria Steinem had an itinerant childhood. When she was a young girl, her father would pack the family in the car every fall and drive across country searching for adventure and trying to make a living. The seeds were planted: Gloria realized that growing up didn’t have to mean settling down. And so began a lifetime of travel, of activism and leadership, of listening to people whose voices and ideas would inspire change and revolution.

My Life on the Road is the moving, funny, and profound story of Gloria’s growth and also the growth of a revolutionary movement for equality—and the story of how surprising encounters on the road shaped both. From her first experience of social activism among women in India to her work as a journalist in the 1960s; from the whirlwind of political campaigns to the founding of Ms. magazine; from the historic 1977 National Women’s Conference to her travels through Indian Country—a lifetime spent on the road allowed Gloria to listen and connect deeply with people, to understand that context is everything, and to become part of a movement that would change the world.

In prose that is revealing and rich, Gloria reminds us that living in an open, observant, and “on the road” state of mind can make a difference in how we learn, what we do, and how we understand each other.

Praise for My Life on the Road

“Like Steinem herself, [My Life on the Road] is thoughtful and astonishingly humble. It is also filled with a sense of the momentous while offering deeply personal insights into what shaped her.”O: The Oprah Magazine

“A lyrical meditation on restlessness and the quest for equity . . . Part of the appeal of My Life is how Steinem, with evocative, melodic prose, conveys the air of discovery and wonder she felt during so many of her journeys. . . . The lessons imparted in Life on the Road offer more than a reminiscence. They are a beacon of hope for the future.”USA Today

“A warmly companionable look back at nearly five decades as itinerant feminist organizer and standard-bearer. If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to sit down with Ms. Steinem for a casual dinner, this disarmingly intimate book gives a pretty good idea, mixing hard-won pragmatic lessons with more inspirational insights.”The New York Times

“Steinem rocks. My Life on the Road abounds with fresh insights and is as populist as can be.”The Boston Globe

“In person and in her writing, Steinem exudes a rare combination of calm, humility and honesty about her weaknesses that explains all she has accomplished.”Jezebel

 

My 5 Star Movie Review:

Four actresses played the gradual years of Gloria Steinem. Julienne Moore plays Steinem at her height of fame in the 70s and beyond. A journalist in the making in a male dominant world – almost Madmenesque in comparison is what  Gloria is faced with when she comes back from India in her early twenties and wants to publish the stories she wrote of the suffering, abuse and oppression of women of India, but a male dominant world isn’t interested in women’s opinions, much less allowing them to publish back in the 1950s. This is the story about how she became an organizer and a rising star for the Women’s Liberation Movement. She was a crusader, culminated from her many experiences of interviewing women, inspiring her to stand up against a culture so dominated by the male perspective.

Gloria educated women about themselves and their worth. She grew up questioning why a woman’s mind wasn’t as important as a man’s. And although her aim was to fight for women’s equality and rights, we learn about her stagefright and the women who cheered her on and taught her to use her voice publicly.

The movie begins in Steinem’s childhood years where her father was a poor traveling antique salesman with a wild imagination that encapsulated Gloria’s imagination. Her mother was a depressed woman, and as the movie doesn’t go into many details, Gloria learns her mother was a writer in her earlier life, of course under a penned name because women writers weren’t published under their own names in those times. As Gloria grows through the movie and thinks back on pivotal moments in her life, the movie has scenes where two Glorias at different ages are seen conversing with each other. These scenes, as well as some beautiful dramatized ‘dream’ sequences also take us right into her life.

At twenty, Steinem went to India to study, which opened her curiosity and the doors that led her to journalism and her rise to an icon as a leader for women’s rights. Despite her stagefright, Steinem was a woman who asked questions – why can’t women do that? Why do only men get to become journalists, as she got herself in her first journalist reporting job in a man’s world. She asks why only men were editors. She wasnt brash, just natural and honest.

Steinem faced a lot of male dominated pushback. She got her first articles published at the New York Times, where she was hired to write for the ladies column, which of course was a stepping stone for her, but writing ‘Susie Homemaker’ articles wasn’t her interest. She went undercover as a Playboy bunny to get a real feel for how woman were treated like objects, then took the verbal tauntings and sexual harassment at the Times, by powerful men journalists who were womanizers, expecting her to jump up from her writing to serve them coffee,  and subjected to sexual harassment. She’d had enough and left as we get a glimpse of the backroom politics of the era.

Steinem was a calm voice of reason in the midst of rising hatred and extremists. Her followers came from of all communities and walks of life – globally – all women of every race, creed and color looked to her as an icon of the times. Women’s equal rights movements were reborn again and this time millions of women around the world heard the call.

In the 1970s  Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine, she was responsible for initiating the beginning of the acceptance of Ms. to become a legal salutation.

Gloria Steinem came from humble beginnings and remains humble to this day. Gloria was and is one of the most inspiring, influential, bold and legendary women of modern history.

 

*This movie is available free if you have Amazon Prime.

 

One poignant line caught my attention and had me nodding in affirmation:

“Writers and dancers have fear of public speaking they are used to speaking through the written word or their art.”

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Quotes that resonated from the movie – These quotes are taken from a recent speech Steinem gave at the Women’s March in 2018, footage shown at the end of the movie:

 

“Thank you for understanding that sometimes, we must put our bodies where our beliefs are. Sometimes, pressing send is not enough.”

“We are here and around the world for a deep democracry that says, we will not be quiet, we will not be controled.”

“God may be in the details, but the goddess is in  connections”

“We are linked, we are not ranked. We are the people.”

“We have people power and we will use it. This is the upside of the downside. This is an outpouring of energy and a true democracy like I have never seen in my very long life. It is wise with age, it is deep in diversity. And remember the constitution does not begin with ‘I the president’, it begins with we the people.”

 

If you’d like to read more about Gloria Steinem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem

 

©DGKaye2020

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