It’s been a while, and that is because it definitely took a moment to get through this book. Which was fine. Interesting, maybe not the most brilliant non-fiction read of the year, but it was still a nice light-hearted book. The reason why I picked this up in the bookshop in the first place was that it was a book about some of the women of history who have been woefully overlooked and that sounded right up my street!
But then there is the truth of the matter: while I do love a book that focuses solely on women and their brilliance, rhetoric, class and overcoming adversities in the face of institutional misogyny… my mind started to wander at certain points, which is never a good sign.
So what did I actually enjoy about the book? There were lots of things to like. There were stories about women from all over the world. I liked that the book was not Eurocentric, which I find problematic. There were stories about women from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas. That was refreshing; women are brilliant all over the place and not just because they happened to be born in Renaissance Italy or during the Age of Enlightenment. It was nice to read about women who I had never heard of doing wonderful things, being pioneers of their time. Being able to control land and ideas, like Christine de Pizan and Artemisia Gentileschi. It is a pity that history has been so negligent of them, but also that there was a resounding belief throughout the millennia that women were better off being uneducated. Imagine being able to read and write being considered a ‘tremendous achievement’ for a woman. I’m glad I’m alive now.
Now, the things I didn’t exactly love about the book. I feel like this could’ve been a bigger book; it felt a little thin on the ground, and it tried to do a lot without really knowing what it wanted to do. The stories of the women told were great, but they were brief. I do understand that this may have been written with the general public in mind and that it was aimed at being a general overview. But I couldn’t really remember many of the women mentioned… perhaps focusing on maybe 5 women rather than the 10 -15 women in the book would’ve been more prudent and less rushed. I applaud the effort of trying to cover extraordinary women from all over the world… in 260 pages… a bold effort, but I didn’t quite stick the landing for me.