A Return to Books about Books: Eileen Favorite Unleashes The Heroines on the American Landscape
Thirteen-year-old Penny Entwhistle, in Eileen Favorite’s new novel The Heroines, is growing up in the 1970s American Midwest on a steady diet of Watergate coverage and over-the-top dramatic heroines, from Scarlett O’Hara to Blanche du Bois. For those of us who grew up in similar places and times with similar reading lists, Penny is a familiar figure. One difference: for Penny, the fictional heroines come to weepy, irreverent life and set up residence at her family’s Iowa bed and breakfast, where they proceed to fret and moan and generally make themselves the disconsolate center of attention. In short, they behave like 13-year-olds. Anyone see a parallel here?
Please tell me Rosencrantz and Guildenstern really ARE dead this time.
For those weary of a current influx of literary endeavors where secondary characters take center stage, The Heroines provides a welcome departure. In Favorite’s rendering, the titular heroines, while central to their own stories, take a bucolic backseat to Favorite’s own heroine—especially after a midnight meeting in the woods with a dark stranger and an imprudent mention of the heroines lands Penny in The Unit, a dismal Bell Jar-esque hospital where rebellious and “hysterical” teenage girls are alternately bullied and bribed, albeit with little real success, into conventionally discreet behavior. Fascinating, funny, familiar, and informative—particularly for those being introduced to these literary ladies for the first time—The Heroines is an irreverent and entertaining coming-of-age story and a wonderful paean to the joys and, yes, the foibles of embracing literature and some of its more excessive dramatis personae in our lives. Heroines who make an appearance include: J.D. Salinger’s Franny Glass (of Franny and Zooey), Blanche Du Bois, Scarlett O'Hara, Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights’ Catherine Earnshaw, and Hester (and Pearl) Prynne, among others. Light-hearted yet thoughtful, The Heroines also makes a great book group choice.
Thirteen-year-old Penny Entwhistle, in Eileen Favorite’s new novel The Heroines, is growing up in the 1970s American Midwest on a steady diet of Watergate coverage and over-the-top dramatic heroines, from Scarlett O’Hara to Blanche du Bois. For those of us who grew up in similar places and times with similar reading lists, Penny is a familiar figure. One difference: for Penny, the fictional heroines come to weepy, irreverent life and set up residence at her family’s Iowa bed and breakfast, where they proceed to fret and moan and generally make themselves the disconsolate center of attention. In short, they behave like 13-year-olds. Anyone see a parallel here?
Please tell me Rosencrantz and Guildenstern really ARE dead this time.
For those weary of a current influx of literary endeavors where secondary characters take center stage, The Heroines provides a welcome departure. In Favorite’s rendering, the titular heroines, while central to their own stories, take a bucolic backseat to Favorite’s own heroine—especially after a midnight meeting in the woods with a dark stranger and an imprudent mention of the heroines lands Penny in The Unit, a dismal Bell Jar-esque hospital where rebellious and “hysterical” teenage girls are alternately bullied and bribed, albeit with little real success, into conventionally discreet behavior. Fascinating, funny, familiar, and informative—particularly for those being introduced to these literary ladies for the first time—The Heroines is an irreverent and entertaining coming-of-age story and a wonderful paean to the joys and, yes, the foibles of embracing literature and some of its more excessive dramatis personae in our lives. Heroines who make an appearance include: J.D. Salinger’s Franny Glass (of Franny and Zooey), Blanche Du Bois, Scarlett O'Hara, Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights’ Catherine Earnshaw, and Hester (and Pearl) Prynne, among others. Light-hearted yet thoughtful, The Heroines also makes a great book group choice.
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