(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Contemporary Fiction Views: Women in their place [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-17 Two books I've been reading lately, meant as escapes, as entertainments, are providing something in addition to respite from headlines and neighbors. They are portraits of women who know what place society has assigned to them, but who are not going to just sit down and take it. Fair Rosaline, by Natasha Solomons, is a retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. When Romeo and his friends sneak into a Capulet ball, it is to see her. But he sees her cousin, Juliet, instead and so much for Rosaline. Solomons gives the girl discarded in the play a voice. In the novel, Rosaline's mother has just died of the plague. Her father plans to hand her over to a convent. That's far less expensive than raising the funds for a dowry. Not yet 16, Rosaline pleads for a year of freedom before being entombed while alive, which is how she views life in a nunnery. Her father gives her a fortnight. One of the first things she does is dress as a boy and sneak into a Montague ball. Romeo finds her, and again the next day. He woos her with beautiful words and deeds. Rosaline finds the words as pretty as he is. But even with the incentive of possibly escaping the convent, she wonders why Romeo is saying them to a stranger. When she spurs him, Romeo turns his attention to her 13-year-old cousin. Juliet. He's not going to succeed, if Rosaline can help it before she has to leave her life. Another new novel, set centuries later than the Solomons book, shows how society continues to find ways to keep women as property and in their place. The Square of Sevens, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, is the Dickensian adventure of a young woman in Austen's Regency period. Red, as she calls herself, is the child of a travelling man of tricks. Her father has taught the motherless child how to tell fortunes with cards, setting them out in a pattern named the Square of Sevens. Just before he dies, he convinces a fellow guest at a Cornish inn to take the child. The kind scholar does. When Red is grown and starting to be known in their home of Bath, bad things happen to those she loves. She is soon part of a travelling band of players, telling fortunes. At the same time, she tries to get to know members of a rich family that may be where her mother came from. They have been fighting in courts and in person over the fortune of their common ancestor. Documents Red's father passed along to her may well play a part. But in the meantime, she has to navigate how to survive without a guardian or husband, without a name in society. The Bennet girls never had things this dire. Like Rosaline, however, Red isn't going to just sit there and hit bottom, Moll Flanders style, before finding out her place in the family to which she may belong, as well as the family she has found. Neither novel focuses on the societal constraints of the protagonists. Both are explicit in that these characters would have not have their dilemmas in which their plots engage them without these constraints. And both are written from a 21st century perspective that we know women deserve better. What neither novel states, although the conclusion is there for any reader to arrive at, is that 21st century women are more likely to have their lives constrained by society now than they were 50 years ago. BOOK NOTES: Favorite banned books recommended by Electric Literature staff include resources for said books to get into the hands of Florida readers, where former teacher and current authoritarian wannabe DeSantis really does not want people to read. Among the books scheduled to be published today: Hazardous Spirits by Anbara Salam. From the publisher: In 1920s Edinburgh, Scotland, Evelyn Hazard is a young, middle-class housewife living the life she’s always expected—until her husband, Robert, upends everything with a startling announcement: he can communicate with the dead. The couple is pulled into the spiritualist movement—a religious society of mediums and psychics that emerged following the mass deaths of the Spanish flu and First World War. All That Rises by Alma Garcia. From the publisher: In the border city of El Paso, Texas, two guardedly neighboring families have plunged headlong into a harrowing week. Rose Marie DuPre, wife and mother, has abandoned her family. On the doorstep of the Gonzales home, long-lost rebel Inez appears. As Rose Marie’s husband, Huck (manager of a maquiladora), and Inez’s brother, Jerry (a college professor), struggle separately with the new shape of their worlds, Lourdes, the Mexican maid who works in both homes, finds herself entangled in the lives of her employers, even as she grapples with a teenage daughter who only has eyes for el otro lado—life, American style. Yara by Tamara Faith Burger. From the publisher: Distraught that her teenage daughter is in love with a woman a decade older, Yara’s mother sends her away from their home in Brazil to Israel, on a Birthright trip for Jewish youth. Freed from her increasingly controlling and jealous girlfriend, Yara is determined to forge her own path and follow her desires. The Library of America: Mao II and Underworld by Don DeLillo. From the publisher: The definitive edition of a modern master continues with two mid-career masterpieces, published here with new prefaces from the author. Underworld is amazing. The opening: He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful. One Hundred Days by Alice Pung. From the publisher: Sixteen and pregnant, Karuna finds herself trapped in her mother’s Melbourne public housing apartment for one hundred days, awaiting the birth of her child—and her mother’s next move in a shocking power struggle over who will raise the baby. She writes to her unborn child, so there's a record of what really happened. Bournville by Jonathan Coe. From the publisher: A tender and wickedly funny portrait of England told through four generations of one family. One Woman Show by Christine Coulson. From the publisher: A sly and stylish novel—remarkably told through museum wall labels—about a 20th-century woman who transforms herself from a precious object into an unforgettable protagonist. The Understory by Saneh Sangsuk. From the publisher: The lovable, yarnspinning monk Luang Paw Tien, now in his nineties, is the last person in his village to bear witness to the power and plenitude of the jungle before agrarian and then capitalist life took over his community. Nightly, he entertains the children of his village with tales from his younger years: his long pilgrimage to India, his mother’s dreams of a more stable life through agriculture, his proud huntsman father who resisted those dreams, and his love, who led him to pursue those dreams all over again. Sangsuk’s novel is a celebration of the oral tradition of storytelling and, above all else, a testament to the power of stories to entertain. And, hurrah! What is a holiday at Chez bookgirl, the publication of this year's edition of Best American Short Stories. Edited this yar by Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko. 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