Distant, analytical , interior ( )

This was a strange book. All the chapters are narrated by one of the five friends, Stella, who somehow knows exactly what her friends are thinking in their chapters. Stella's character seemed the least coherent to me (and that's saying something, because Kay and Priss were hard to get a handle on too).

The whole thing felt fairly inconsequential. There were glimmers of plot: Polly's job sounded interesting, Kay ran away for a month. Mostly though there were descriptions of what seemed to me deeply unsatisfactory marital/romantic relationships, but which the characters appeared to see as the norm. Maybe my standards are too high, but I wanted to tell the author that it's possible to be far happier in a relationship than she seemed to conceive of. There were a lot of instances of mothers having almost obsessive relationships with their (girl) babies and then going off them once they became toddlers and gained a mind of their own, which was disturbing in more than one way.

I suppose there must have been something in it (the #metoo sections looked as if they were going somewhere but fizzled out) since I have found so much to say, but I wouldn't recommend it. ( )