One of those well put together novels that feels just a bit too well put together. It starts off as a campus coming of age story (making me think of The Idiot) before sharpening, not too many pages in, into being also about feminism at the levels of the personal and the political - and, as the novel's cast and plot expand, its transmission across generations and the attendant conflicts - and eventually kaleidoscoping further outwards to encompass sections told from the perspective of not just Greer but also her high school boyfriend Cory, her best friend Zee, the second wave feminist icon she encounters Faith Frank, and the venture capitalist Emmett Shrader to whom Faith is connected.
Through it all, it remains interesting - persuasive in its depictions of characters and situations (and arcs), and dovetailed in a way that doesn't feel too neat although it veers very close. Yet it never felt in any way surprising, either at the level of story (I guessed the plot-turning death early; all the main characters ended up somewhere more or less linearly predictable given where they started) or how it worked up its themes (although I did like the way it tied Greer's coming into her own self and voice with her betrayal of Zee, and the way it patterned a couple of at least arguably more noble - or differently so - paths in Zee's and Cory's as part of Greer's own progression).
Through it all, it remains interesting - persuasive in its depictions of characters and situations (and arcs), and dovetailed in a way that doesn't feel too neat although it veers very close. Yet it never felt in any way surprising, either at the level of story (I guessed the plot-turning death early; all the main characters ended up somewhere more or less linearly predictable given where they started) or how it worked up its themes (although I did like the way it tied Greer's coming into her own self and voice with her betrayal of Zee, and the way it patterned a couple of at least arguably more noble - or differently so - paths in Zee's and Cory's as part of Greer's own progression).
