Florence Gordon by Brian Morton

I read Florence Gordon by Brian Morton for book club this month.

Florence is strong and sure and unmovable, so imperious in the surety of her superior understanding that she is hard to be around. She is also single-minded, unable to small talk or socialize, wasting time on trivialities.

At 75 years old, she is trying to write one last book before the inevitable. Her granddaughter Emily helps her grandmother by doing research. Emily ends up learning about her grandmother's life and achievements, her iconic books and essays. And in the process is able to find her own path.

The son/daughter-in-law thread was not necessary; their story was inconclusive and did not seem related to Florence. Unless the daughter-in-law was supposed to be a foil for Florence, showing her opposite, so granddaughter Emily has two role models to choose from. Her mother worships Florence but she is not much like her; she is a good enough mom, although not so good a wife.

I hated the short episodic chapters, they did not draw me to keep reading, each a self-contained scene.

You expect to love your children; it brings a different kind of joy to realize you admire them.

Florence is an interesting character whom one admires more than likes. I especially appreciated Emily's struggle to understand her grandmother and the Feminist movement and how it helped her make a choice about a former boyfriend. The book was written in 2014. In the book, Emily has taken a year off from college.

Emily wasn't particularly political, and she had no idea if she was a feminist. She knew she was a beneficiary of the women's movement--she'd read enough novels, she'd seen enough episodes of Mad Men to know what life before the women's movement was like--but at the same time, the word "feminism" didn't have great associations for her. The feminist girls she knew at Oberlin, her roommate among them, were the kind of people who made you feel bad for liking what you liked. 

Emily wondered whether your identity has less to do with anything inside you than with the time in which you happen to be alive. 

The novel has high praise from critics and readers and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.  But the book club members did not give high ratings to the book. Some admired Florence. We did fill an entire hour talking about the book. But the open ending was not appreciated.

I have read several books recently about older women who came to age in the 1960s. I am sensing a trend here of people who want to explore a politically active generation of women. These women end up being failures as wives and mothers.

I am getting irritated by that generalization, and hope that in the future writers will explore how women can be political, interacting for the common good, while still being loving parents. Perhaps the 'latch-key' generation wishes they had June Cleaver moms.