A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK For fans of The Hours and Fates and Furies, a bold, kaleidoscopic novel intertwining the lives of three women across three centuries as their stories of sex, power, and desire finally converge in the present day. Lily is a mother and a daughter. And a second wife. And a writer, maybe? Or she was going to be, before she had … a writer, maybe? Or she was going to be, before she had children. Now, in her rented Brooklyn apartment she’s grappling with her sexual and intellectual desires, while also trying to manage her roles as a mother and a wife in 2016.
Vivian Barr seems to be the perfect political wife, dedicated to helping her charismatic and ambitious husband find success in Watergate-era Washington D.C. But one night he demands a humiliating favor, and her refusal to obey changes the course of her life–along with the lives of others.
Esther is a fiercely independent young woman in ancient Persia, where she and her uncle’s tribe live a tenuous existence outside the palace walls. When an innocent mistake results in devastating consequences for her people, she is offered up as a sacrifice to please the King, in the hopes that she will save them all.
In Anna Solomon’s The Book of V., these three characters’ riveting stories overlap and ultimately collide, illuminating how women’s lives have and have not changed over thousands of years.
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The Book of V. has to be one of the most masterfully crafted and thought-provoking books I’ve read in years. It follows a major event in the lives of three women – one in biblical times, one in 1970s Washington, and one in present-day Brooklyn. All three are forced to confront male power in frighteningly similar ways.
But the themes of this book go well beyond that. These women’s stories are of family and feminism, of power and the lack thereof, and of the search for fulfillment.
The biblical voice is Esther, of the biblical story of Esther. The 1970s voice is Vee, married to a power-hungry congressman in DC. The contemporary voice is Lily, a wife and mother of two, who looks around her at women who seem settled into their lives while she struggles to find her place in the world.
From the start, The Book of V. made me think – first about the parallels between these three women, and then, once I grasped that, about the larger issues of the book. Like, the clash of power between the sexes, even within the sexes, and the role feminism plays in that. Like, the role of sex itself, good and bad, in relationships. Like, men in power who should not be and the impact that has on women. Like, the choices women make, that haven’t really changed in thousands of years.
Let me say here that I had to work to get into this book. My reading time was broken up, and I had to latch onto three separate stories. Once done, though, I was blown away. The Book of V. isn’t a long one, which made my fixation with the characters all the more remarkable. Moreover, there is a surprise twist at the end.
I’ll be rereading this book. I don’t usually do that, but I sense I’ll get even more from it the second time around.
I have mixed feelings about this book. While the writing is very good, the story is lacking something. The book is written in revolving chapters, each focusing on one of three women. There’s Viv, the wife of a new US Senator. Lily, a college professor who has abandoned her career to stay home, to be a wife and mother to her two young daughters. We get to learn a lot about Lily’s mother, Ruth, too. (Honestly, Ruth seems the most interesting of all the characters. I’d have liked to have the book focused more on her.) And Esther, the biblical Esther, who will go on to save her people. There’s also her predecessor, Queen Vashti. Each story on its own would have been interesting, but I didn’t think they worked that well together. It takes until around page 200 (out of 300) for the author to finally pull all three stories together, and then it’s done through the silly device of showing that one of the characters has changed her name, basically tricking the reader. That was incredibly annoying.
I enjoyed the story of Esther the best, for I felt that it was the most thoroughly developed. The others left me scratching my head. All three stories are told with a strong feminist bent. Each woman chooses to do what makes them comfortable with themselves. Vee and Ruth mirror Esther and Vashti, similar stories across time. Lily seems to be the one to draw the stories together. While all three women are strong and determined, they sometimes come across as week. I can’t say that I found so many of the characters engaged in marital misconduct engaging. Only one of the characters doing this made any sense because he was so clearly a deviated personality.
I think it would help readers understand the story better if they are intimately familiar with the story of Esther. If not, hints and nuances that will help to connect the characters early on in the book will be missed. This was an okay read, but nothing special. I doubt I’ll go out of my way to seek out other books by this author.
The best part of the entire book was the ending where Lily shone. She’d taken over the writing and production of a synagogue’s Purim play after her mother’s death. She added just he right touches to the play, filled with humor and interest. It was when I like her the best, when it finally became clear that she truly was highly educated and a good researcher, a person capable of managing such a production. The rest of the book, she came off as weak and uncertain.
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway in March 2020, just as the pandemic lockdown began. It took seven months and many emails and messages before I received the book. I thank the person I contacted at Henry Holt who finally arranged for the book to be sent. I appreciate having had the opportunity to read this book. It’s fired an interest to learn more about Esther and what she did and how she did it. I thank Goodreads and Henry Holt for their generosity, but it had no effect on this review. All opinions in this review reflect my true and honest reactions to reading this book.
I loved this book’s ambition. Any modern retelling of a biblical character has me hooked as well. The braiding of the three point-of-view characters’ stories was masterful and the reveal about two-thirds of the way through around how their lives were even more tightly wound was terrific.
Having just finished reading Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth lesser, I am struck by how Esther and Vashti’s stories might have been interpreted entirely differently if a woman had first written them. Here was my chance to find out! Just as the Lionel and Ian in the novel malign and misconstrue Vee’s intentions, so has been the masculine lens on a woman’s life.
This book grapples with such important issues around motherhood, femininity, misogyny, but with a structure that is incredibly innovative and entertaining.
This book has an ambitious, bold, and complex storyline involving three different characters and three different timelines. The author may have been better served to choose one storyline and one timeline to delve into. Using all three did not do justice to any of them, although Esther’s story was a bit stronger than the other two. The characters remained amorphous and might leave the reader wanting more of something to make them come alive for her. The jumping from timeline to timeline, character to character took this reader out of the story time and again. I also found using the narrative format left too many gaps in the readers’ mind.
With all the above, the story, while it started off slowly, gained more momentum with each chapter. Most readers will find themselves caught up in the story, if only to get to the Esther chapters. There will undoubtedly be many readers who will be able to relate to the other characters as well.
My thanks to Henry Holt and Edelweiss for an eArc.