Why Meg Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion Is the Ideal Book Club Pick

This engrossing novel follows the trajectory of Greer Kadetsky, a smart, ambitious young woman who lost her chance at attending Yale because her pot-smoking parents didn’t fill out the financial aid forms correctly. Instead, she finds herself at Ryland, her safety school, when glamorous, famous feminist Faith Frank (“a couple of steps down from Gloria Steinem”) comes to give a talk to the students. Shy Greer screws up her courage to talk to Faith afterward. Faith gives Greer her business card, and with it a possible path forward toward a professional future.
Meanwhile, Greer tries to sustain her romance with her charming high school boyfriend while he studies at Princeton, and makes a fast friend in Zee, a young woman who has always thrown herself into political causes, including feminism. Although part of the fun of book clubs can be arguing over who liked the book and who didn’t and why, The Female Persuasion is as close as it gets to a guaranteed crowd pleaser. We hope you’ll pick up a special book club edition of the book—including a Reading Group Guide and an essay by the author—and sign up now to join us in stores on May 2. Here’s why we think it’s the perfect pick for a great conversation…over coffee and cookies, of course.
It’s timely
In light of our nation’s growing focus on social justice causes and the power of protest—in particular around issues centering on women, among them the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements—Wolitzer’s book is certain both to spur chatter and to advance conversations you may already be having. And tracking Greer’s path from innocence to experience, from stars in her eyes to a weary understanding of the fallibility of even the idols among us, is a theme that will never grow old.
It’s sharp
Read this one with Post-Its: you’ll want to flag something on every page. Wolitzer’s evocative, specific prose includes lines like this one, on the kind of nasty cocktails imbibed by undergrads since time immemorial: “It was the pastel pink of bug juice, but immediately had a muscular, slugging effect on Greer Kadetsky.” Or this line, perfectly evoking that post-college moment when new graduates are feeling their way toward what the future may hold: “Jobs made you sit up straighter and scheme, trying to think of any connections you had ever made and could now use.”
It’s delicious
Appropriate for a book that starts out in college, more than one of its scenes take place around pizza (“Pizza would be their consolation prize, two girls alone late at night with the soft solace of warm dough”). It evokes the self-consciously fancy finger foods of upscale feminist seminars (“gemological tuna tartare slicked with yuzu gelée”). And it pokes fun at the food that, via Big Advertising, has become synonymous with packaged feminine actualization (“the international symbol of female food: yogurt”). It’s a good thing book club attendees will get a free coffee and cookie at B&N Cafés: this book will make you hungry.
It’s inspiring
The Female Persuasion‘s focus on women’s empowerment and its characters’ quests to make a difference in the world might inspire you and your fellow attendees to engage in some group activism. Don’t let the conversation stop at the bookstore doors: take up a collection for a charity that helps women, or write postcards together to support a cause people care about. Though you’ll be a little wiser, perhaps, in where you put your energies after following Greer on her journey.