These Women

by Ivy Pochoda

Overview

A Recommended Book From
The New York Times Book Review * The Washington Post * Vogue * Entertainment Weekly * Elle * People * Marie Claire * Vulture * The Minneapolis Star-Tribune * LitHub * Crime Reads * PopSugar * AARP * Book Marks * South Florida Sun Sentinel

From the award-winning author of Wonder Valley and Visitation Street comes a serial killer story like you’ve never seen before—a literary thriller of female empowerment and social change

In West Adams, a rapidly changing part of South Los Angeles, they’re referred to as “these women.” These women on the corner … These women in the club … These women who won’t stop asking questions … These women who got what they deserved … 

In her masterful new novel, Ivy Pochoda creates a kaleidoscope of loss, power, and hope featuring five very different women whose lives are steeped in danger and anguish. They’re connected by one man and his deadly obsession, though not all of them know that yet. There’s Dorian, still adrift after her daughter’s murder remains unsolved; Julianna, a young dancer nicknamed Jujubee, who lives hard and fast, resisting anyone trying to slow her down; Essie, a brilliant vice cop who sees a crime pattern emerging where no one else does; Marella, a daring performance artist whose work has long pushed boundaries but now puts her in peril; and Anneke, a quiet woman who has turned a willfully blind eye to those around her for far too long. The careful existence they have built for themselves starts to crumble when two murders rock their neighborhood.

Written with beauty and grit, tension and grace, These Women is a glorious display of storytelling, a once-in-a-generation novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062656384
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	05/19/2020
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	50,333
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Ivy Pochoda is the author of The Art of Disappearing, Visitation Street, and Wonder Valley, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and winner of the Strand Critics Award. She lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/24/2020

Fish shack owner Dorian Williams, one of several working-class women at the center of this heartbreaking novel, has done little to fill the void in her life in the 15 years since her teenage daughter, Lecia, was murdered in 1999—the 13th and presumed final victim of a serial killer who was never caught. Then one evening, near her fish shack in South Central L.A., a woman’s body is dumped exactly as Lecia was, throat slit and a plastic bag over her face. Without sacrificing narrative drive, Pochoda (Wonder Valley) lets her story unfold organically and impressionistically, through the eyes of her distinctive female characters, who include Julianna, now a hard-partying cocktail waitress but once the child Lecia babysat the night she died; undersized Hispanic LAPD detective Essie, who knows all too well what it’s like not to be taken seriously; and former hooker Feelia, left for dead back in 1999 after Lecia’s murder, whose potentially critical information the police repeatedly ignore. This deep dive into the lives of women too often unseen in the shadows makes them vividly unforgettable. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, Inkwell Literary Management. (May)

Publishers Weekly

These Women is full of resilient and undaunted characters that society often doesn’t give a second look to. But Ivy Pochoda does and in these pages she gives us the small story that grows so large in meaning and emotion as to transcend genre. It tells us how to look at ourselves and at what is important.

Michael Connelly

Ivy Pochoda is the empath of the overlooked, writing thoughtful, nuanced novels about individuals whose voices frequently go unheard in the real world…. A feminist-weighted piece of crime fiction…. While serial killers dehumanize their victims, and true crime reportage reduces them to before and after photographs, here Pochoda restores their humanity, giving these women identities beyond their relationship to the killer.

Los Angeles Review of Books

"The city that Pochoda conjures in artful, unmissable detail on nearly every page: a place as textured and immediate as any breathing, sentient character.”

Entertainment Weekly

"Electric.... Filled with snappy and propulsive prose... In revealing what happens when women are discounted, [Pochoda] poses an uncomfortable question: Why do we fight for some and not others?"

Time

Flawless... Razor-sharp… 'These Women' is at first glance a conventional murder mystery constructed on that sturdy old tripod of serial killer, murdered women and dogged female detective. But each of those elements is freshly minted here thanks to the psychological depth granted each character and the graceful twists of Ms. Pochoda’s cunning yet unfussy plot….Only when the last piece of this finely crafted puzzle slides into place is the killer revealed.

Wall Street Journal

Ivy Pochoda’s These Women is, to put it simply, brilliant. I usually hate it when people use the term tour-de-force but in this case, it applies.

Crime Reads

"Five very different women have one thing in common: They are all being watched by a vicious series killer. Inverting the classic cat-and-mouse style, Ivy Pochoda's masterful page-turner rocks with tension."

Marie Claire

Ivy Pochoda asks readers to consider one of the themes that unites her books: Who are the people we overlook, ignore, don't see, dismiss in the world?…. Not only has Pochoda written an immersive, intriguing murder mystery — she's also crafted a framework with which we can examine how all women are viewed in Western cultures.

NPR

"These Women doesn’t hinge on the killer’s identity or the logistics of catching him. Instead, the central question is whether anyone will ever listen to the women, victims or survivors…. In fine-tuned and affecting prose, Pochoda captures the women’s voices, the way they use cracked humor or street smarts as coping mechanisms."

Los Angeles Times

Flawless... Razor-sharp… 'These Women' is at first glance a conventional murder mystery constructed on that sturdy old tripod of serial killer, murdered women and dogged female detective. But each of those elements is freshly minted here thanks to the psychological depth granted each character and the graceful twists of Ms. Pochoda’s cunning yet unfussy plot….Only when the last piece of this finely crafted puzzle slides into place is the killer revealed.

Wall Street Journal

These Women is a gritty murder mystery with a feminist twist. Ivy Pochoda’s LA-set noir is the perfect summer read.

O: the Oprah Magazine

★ 04/01/2020

A seedy but changing neighborhood in Los Angeles is home to five women, unknowingly linked to one man, who live their lives on the margins of society. Strippers and dancers, mothers and daughters, each tells her gritty, unflinching tale of perpetual poverty and life on the street. When more than one young woman is brutally murdered, a petite and mildly disgraced, gum-chewing Latina police detective named Essie pieces together the clues that reveal a 15-year trail of death. No one listens to her. No one listens to any of these vulnerable, hard-bitten women. Drug use and sex work are prevalent, but some turn to art to express this tough lifestyle. Others lash out in the quietude of the cemetery. Laced with grief and rage, racism and sexism, this edgy urban drama centers upon a serial killer's obsession that targets women of color living a lifestyle that garners little sympathy. VERDICT Pochoda (Wonder Valley) stuns with this disquieting literary thriller rife with descriptive street language and violence. It is complex, intense, and enthralling. Fans of Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room will experience a similar sense of feeling both captivated and bereft. [See Prepub Alert, 10/28/19.]—Gloria Drake, Oswego P.L. Dist., IL

Library Journal

2020-02-10
Six women struggle in the shadow of a serial killer who was never apprehended.

“Thirteen girls dead. Fifteen years gone. By Dorian’s count, and her count is right, three other serial murderers have been hauled in, tried, and locked up in Los Angeles in that time. But not a single arrest for the murder of girls along Western.” Dorian is a white woman who owns a fry shop on the edge of a neighborhood known mainly for prostitution and drugs. Her half-black daughter was the 13th and last of the girls found in the street, discarded, with their throats cut. Unlike the others, her daughter was a babysitter, not a prostitute, but no one seems to care about that distinction. No one seems to care about these murders at all except one babbling woman who may have been the sole survivor of the attacks, and no one is listening to her. Then, 15 years later, more girls turn up dead. Pochoda (Wonder Valley, 2017, etc.) again tells a story of Angelenos on the margins. These women’s stories intersect at the murders, and their connections are unraveled by a tiny, bike-riding cop named Essie Perry. It is Perry to whom Dorian comes to complain about the poisoned hummingbirds being left at her fry shop and her home. “What are the chances that a woman who shows up at the station with a box full of dead birds had a daughter killed in nearly identical fashion to three victims found off Western?” wonders Essie. This seamy thriller is loaded with feminist intentions, ideas about photography (including an homage to Larry Sultan), a quick dip into women’s boxing, and more. Unsurprisingly for Pochoda, the strongest character is the LA neighborhood itself.

Gritty, sometimes cheesy, very on-the-nose with its message—but satisfying as a murder mystery.

Kirkus Reviews

Pochoda turns grief, suffering and loss into art, crafting a literary thriller that is no less compelling for its deep emotional resonance.

Vogue

"This stunning, thought-provoking novel set in Los Angeles is about a group of women connected in terrible, tragic ways. The narrative flips the lens of a traditional serial killer novel and focuses light on the women with an unabashed authenticity."

Minneapolis Star Tribune

"If women are the victims in this intricate, deeply felt, beautifully written novel, they are also its heroes. The story unfolds through the perspectives of five characters, all women, with overlapping and interweaving histories. Their voices sizzle and sparkle; each of them helps advance the plot, and each brings to it her own particular pain and her own particular tragedy. All are haunted by birth and circumstance."

New York Times Book Review

These Women is a gritty murder mystery with a feminist twist. Ivy Pochoda’s LA-set noir is the perfect summer read.

the Oprah Magazine O

Stunning . . . . Ivy Pochoda finds beauty in the gritty side, hope where others see limited options, and grace and strength in those who live on the margins. So do the characters in These Women the excellent fourth novel from this California author. Loneliness, courage and the strength to go on swirl through the lives of These Women, each of whom Pochoda explores with compassion and empathy as they try to survive South Central Los Angeles’ mean streets. . . . Pochoda delves deep to explore each woman’s psyche while finding the humanity in the smallest details.

South Florida Sun Sentinel

"With raw, visceral prose, Pochoda vividly evokes L.A.'s distinctive cityscape and the burdens and threats women face there."

Booklist

"Pochoda’s unconventional crime novel probes whom we listen to and why, and whose voices are deemed worthy of being heard."

Vulture

"[Pochoda] brings a devasting feminist slant to a serial killer story, set against the mean streets of South Los Angeles... As sharp as the blade of a knife."

The Girlfriend

I can promise you will not easily forget the women in this book. This is Ivy Pochoda at the height of her power—to slip inside the psyche of women at the margins; to, with a conjurer’s flair, capture the voices of multiple characters with pitch perfect grace; and to craft a bendy, surprising, page-turning tale.  It’s brilliantly plotted and beautifully written.

Attica Locke

"With raw, visceral prose, Pochoda vividly evokes L.A.'s distinctive cityscape and the burdens and threats women face there."

Booklist

"These Women doesn’t hinge on the killer’s identity or the logistics of catching him. Instead, the central question is whether anyone will ever listen to the women, victims or survivors…. In fine-tuned and affecting prose, Pochoda captures the women’s voices, the way they use cracked humor or street smarts as coping mechanisms."

|Los Angeles Times

"Electric.... Filled with snappy and propulsive prose... In revealing what happens when women are discounted, [Pochoda] poses an uncomfortable question: Why do we fight for some and not others?"

Time

I can promise you will not easily forget the women in this book. This is Ivy Pochoda at the height of her power—to slip inside the psyche of women at the margins; to, with a conjurer’s flair, capture the voices of multiple characters with pitch perfect grace; and to craft a bendy, surprising, page-turning tale.  It’s brilliantly plotted and beautifully written.

Attica Locke

Read More