A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert

Kate Walbert’s slender novel is just what the title says it is: a short history of American women in the 20th century, told through five generations of a single family. The absent matriarch is Dorothy Trevor Townsend: a determined and troubled suffragette who dies on a hunger strike, leaving behind a daughter and a son. As the generations pass, her legacy echoes through the lives of her female descendents. These women all share Dorothy’s thirst for agency and justice, for companionship and security. But the times that surround them are ever changing, affecting them every bit as much as their heritage. From Evelyn, Dorothy’s brilliant and controlled daughter blazing trails in the American education system to teach chemistry at Barnard College, to Dora, Dorothy’s great-great-granddaughter, whose Facebook profile declares her political views “State of Terror” and religious views “Animist”, each of these women is remarkable in her own right, and at the same time could be any woman of her time.

Walbert’s great triumph in A Short History of Women is her perfectly clear, concise prose. Each chapter, narrated by a different character, is brief and breathtaking: a single moment suspended in time. While she can hardly avoid making a political statement with such a book as this, her empathy lies squarely with her characters, exactly as it should.

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Recommended by Sara D.