The Best 9 of ’09 – Books By, For or About Women
By Robyn Hall
 
And you thought 2008 was the Year of the Woman.   Remember when “going rogue” was in vogue for a certain hockey mom from Alaska?  Oh, and when Michelle Obama fist-bumped her way into fashion history as well as the White House?  And then there was Hillary, a trailblazer who wasn’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling, but as she said, it now has “about 18 million cracks in it.”  Women made history in 2008 by rocking the political, entertainment, and media worlds.
 
Well, 2009 happened to be another Year of the Woman – the woman writer that is.  Of the New York Times’ list of the Top 10 books of 2009, six of them were written by women.  Bravo, ladies.  Check out my list of the best reads of last year: “The Best 9 of ’09 – Books by, for, or About Women.” 

1.  Lit by Mary Karr – I loved Karr’s first book, “The Liar’s Club” which was published to critical acclaim back before tell-alls became the fashionable way to get on Oprah.  I was intrigued by this third memoir’s clever double entendre of a title: “Lit” ala literature, as she is a poet and lit professor.  And “Lit” as in drunk as a skunk alcoholic, which she also is (or was).  But what I really like about Karr is her very real, very tired, very midlife voice.  I feel like she’s been inside my head, and I recognize in her pages the stark clarity, dark humor, and utter doubt with which I live my 46th year of life.   

2.  Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman – I have four sisters (and a saint of a brother), and I really adored this story because Hoffman got the passion, power, anger, guilt, strength, and above all eternal bond of sisters just right.  The Story sisters, Elv, Meg, and Claire, are dark-haired beauties whose stories entwine each other through the devastations of rape, drug addiction, disease, and fatal accidents. While it sounds like a downer of a story, I actually felt at peace when I turned the last page. 
 
3.  The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson -  The girl with the dragon tattoo is back, thank God!  The strange, raw, fiery heroine, Lisbeth Salander, once again finds herself paired with journalist Mikael Blomkvist on the trail of a sinister criminal enterprise. I can never predict the outcome of these wild mysteries, which is one of the many reasons I am addicted to them.  The tragedy of Larsson’s untimely death means that only one more complete “Girl” story will be told, come this May. 
 
4.  The Help by Kathryn Stockett – What a debut!  I learned about this book from Facebook, of all places.  The story is lightly based on the author’s childhood in Mississippi with her maid, Demetrie.  Stockett achieves her ambition to show the differences – and similarities – between black and white women in the south in the 60s.  She paints a believable picture of life as a black maid and also of the world of a middle class country club white girl.  But more importantly, she tries to build a platform for understanding between the two. 
   
5.  The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson – I read Dickinson’s advice column in the Chicago Tribune religiously for her snappy, no-nonsense, sometimes personal and sometimes snarky replies.  It was fun to get to know her better through this book, and I can totally relate to her life in a small town surrounded by strong women and to her “glass half full” optimism.  However, I have to admit that I like Amy Dickinson as an advice columnist more than I like her as an author.  I was disappointed by the book’s lack of organization and disjointedness and also by the surface treatment of all of the women in Freeville – I wanted to know more about this interesting clan.
 
6.  The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver – I have always been a Barbara Kingsolver fan, going all the way back to The Bean Trees and Animal Dreams.  Her latest and most daunting book will continue to inspire my devotion, I am sure.  She writes in the voice of Harrison Shepherd, a young man born of a Mexican mother and an American father who ends up working for the Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera during the time they are providing shelter for the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.  As a Facebook friend said in a review “an excellent adventure I didn’t want to end.”

7.  The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee – From the opening, when Lee describes the title character’s first encounter with Hong Kong – the pungent heat and smells that overwhelm immediately upon setting foot in this exotic city – I was hooked.  When my husband and I moved to Hong Kong in 1995, I had the exact same first reaction.  This book took me back with genuine and vivid descriptions of expat life in the colony, and it was interesting to read about how Hong Kong was treated by the Japanese during the war because not much remains to mark that tumultuous time.  Lee also tapped into one of the most powerful insights I had as an expat:  the ability to treat each move as an opportunity to become a new person, to reinvent myself each time.  I am longing for another “do over” after 10 years in the same stifling suburb!  My only quibble with this book is that I found it hard to find a sympathetic character – not even the piano teacher.    
 
8.  Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls – I will admit that I am completely jealous of Walls, who was handed her grandmother’s incredible life story as a topic for this book.  I am also jealous of her grandmother – what a life Lily Casey Smith led.  She was a first class survivor, storyteller, cowgirl, morality teacher, entrepreneur, mother, wife, and Western hero. She’s a cross between Laura Ingalls Wilder, Amelia Earhart, Scarlett O’Hara  and Erin Brockovich.  Whew!
 
9.  Half the Sky:  Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide  by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn – It was the “must be seen reading” book of the year .  “Women hold up half the sky” is a Chinese saying alluding to the fact that women make up half of the population and therefore should have equality.  However, we know this is not the case in most countries, even our own.  Through personal stories, the married authors/Pulitzer Prize winners have documented why the call to empower women in the developing world is both morally right and strategically necessary.  “Half the Sky” is now a movement to educate and empower women because greater success by women leads to better health, better education, greater productivity and profit, lower violence and terrorism, etc. for all.  Amen.