• Skip to main content

Nadine Feldman, Author

celebrating strong female characters and whatever else strikes my fancy

  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Contact
  • Book Clubs
  • About Nadine
  • Sample Chapters
You are here: Home / Archives for women

women

Book Review: The Henna Artist

April 28, 2021 by admin

Lakshmi ran away from her abusive husband and used her artistic talents to become a henna artist to wealthy women. Clever and quick-minded, she built a successful business over the years, earning enough money to build a house of her own. Her life is about to be upended, though, with the appearance of a younger sister Radha, who she didn’t know she had, and her estranged husband. In The Henna Artist, author Alka Joshi transports us to 1950s India, where old cultural traditions make life difficult for women.

The Henna Artist has been a hugely successful book that has justifiably earned praise from Reese Witherspoon’s book club, so it doesn’t need the endorsement of a little book blogger like me. However, if I love a book I’m going to recommend it, so here we are.

Lakshmi’s emotional journey is absorbing. After all, how does an already successful businesswoman, making her way in a society that is suspicious of unmarried and childless women, grow? Yet Rahda, as an emotional and precocious teenager, becomes a catalyst for the big changes in Lakshmi’s life.

The details of Indian culture, from food to the societal rules, held my interest. And though the story is set in what for us is an exotic locale, there is much for women to relate to in terms of the challenges we face and how we survive.

There is a level of predictability in the story, and some of the resolution seemed a bit too pat for me. It builds beautifully but seems to wrap up too quickly. Also, there were a number of editorial and proofreading errors that I found disappointing. However, the story of the two sisters is brilliant overall, and it’s a wonderful, enjoyable read.

TRIGGER WARNING (NOTE: CONTAINS SPOILER)

If you have an aversion to abortion, you may not want to read this book.


Please feel free to subscribe to my blog below. I review books on Wednesday and starting in May will have a second post during the week on other topics.

If you enjoyed this review, please consider purchasing one of my books. Details can be found here.

Filed Under: books, fiction, women Tagged With: book review, books, fiction, novels, women's fiction

Forgotten Women Writers: P. L. Travers

March 17, 2021 by admin

It may be St. Patrick’s Day, but we’re also still in Women’s History Month! So today I’m writing about P. L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books. Though Travers grew up in Australia, her father was Irish, and while in her twenties she moved to London, often visiting Ireland in the decades she lived there.

When I was a little girl, enchanted by Marie Poppins the movie, I had no idea then that there were books, several of them, in which a very different Mary Poppins existed. (Too be fair, I was five.) This Mary Poppins was vain, cranky, and mysterious.

Turns out Travers hated the movie and went toe to toe with Walt Disney himself during its making. Did you see Saving Mr. Banks? Those tears at the end weren’t that she loved the movie, though that’s what the film might have led you to believe.

As a fellow writer, this realization broke my heart. Travers is not the first or last author to dislike the movie adaptation of a book, but I guess this was the first time I thought about how devastating it must be to see your baby contorted into something you never intended.

Recently, curious about Travers and wanting to learn more about her life, I read Mary Poppins: She Wrote by Valerie Lawson. Travers started out as an actress, then turned to writing. In an age when women were mostly housewives, Travers carved out a successful career that led to the Mary Poppins series. She was outspoken, often abrasive, and impatient with small talk. In other words, my kind of gal.

Turns out she and I have a lot in common. We share, unfortunately, a lot of anxiety and odd ailments. Like Travers, my life has been an ongoing spiritual search, and we both came across some charlatans along the way. And also like Travers, later in my life I have become deeply fascinated with fairy tales and am delving more into their history. That was an odd parallel I didn’t expect!

Deeply private, Travers didn’t want a biography written about her. Though Lawson does her best, she can’t penetrate Travers’ deeper thoughts and feelings because Travers took all that with her. So if we want to know who she was and what matters to her, I suspect the bread crumbs are in all her books. Best get reading.


If you enjoy this blog, please consider purchasing one of my novels. Information is available here. The Factory Girl and the Fey is coming October 2021! Details coming soon.

Filed Under: books, women Tagged With: mary poppins, p. l. travers, women authors, womens history month

Writing Women Back Into History

August 5, 2020 by admin

I would not leave thee, dear beloved place,

A crown, a sceptre, or a throne to grace;

To be a queen—the Nation’s flag unfurl—

A thousand times I’d be a Factory Girl!

An Address to Napiers Dockyard

Ellen Johnston

Years ago while working on a project for college, I ran across a book where astrophysicists debated the existence of God (don’t worry, I’m not going to write about that). I happened to notice they were all male. Are there female astrophysicists? Of course there are, and here’s a list. For whatever reason, though, not a single woman was represented in that book.

This was my first realization of how women are written out of history, even with significant achievements. I thought of this again when I saw the movie Hidden Figures. Would my life have been different, I wondered, if I saw the success and achievements of women at an early age? When I was growing up, I had no idea women, let alone women of color, used mathematical expertise to launch rockets.

So when I discovered my great-great grandmother had been removed from the family history, I wasn’t surprised. Jane the Factory Girl, which I am getting closer to completion, is a fictionalized attempt to bring her back into the family…and to also pay tribute to the women who worked in the mills and factories, whose stories have also been erased.

While doing research for the novel I fell in love with the poetry of Ellen Johnston…and along the way gained exposure to a wealth of Scottish poetry written by women. Never heard of her? Of course not. And yet, in her lifetime, she was well known and popular as a poet.

Ellen began working in factories at either age 11 or 13, not uncommon at the time. She had little schooling, enough to read and write. She later gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, and put the child in her mother’s care because she had to keep working.

After being fired from a mill, Johnston successfully sued for severance. However, this action caused her to be blackballed.

As a poet, Johnston published a number of poems in newspapers under the name Factory Girl. In 1867 she published a collection called Autobiographies, Poems, Songs, and The Factory Girl. A second edition (that deleted references to her daughter) was published in 1869.

Ellen’s fate is unknown. A woman named Helen Johnston died in a poorhouse in 1874, but this may or may not be her. Rumors suggested she married or moved and changed her name. She was known to be in ill health, however, from her years in the mills, so the latter theory is not likely. It’s more, perhaps, what we wish were true. Instead, like too many women, Ellen Johnston just disappeared.

It is a tribute to Johnston that each chapter of Jane the Factory Girl begins with a poem. Where possible, I use Johnston’s lines. Where not, most of the poetry is written by women (I threw in Stevenson and Burns, so men aren’t entirely ignored).

Here again, though, the only female poet I had heard of before working on this novel was Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose stunning poem The Cry of the Children still haunts me. Others include Elizabeth Melville, Mrs. G. G. Richardson, Elizabeth Hamilton, and more (lots of Elizabeths here, I just noticed).

Hopefully Jane the Factory Girl will not only restore Jane’s standing in the family history, but will also bring other women to life whose work and achievements had previously disappeared.

Filed Under: history, poetry, women Tagged With: ellen johnston, factory girl, obscurity, poetry, poets

A Writer’s Life is Many Lives #WDC18 #amwriting

August 15, 2018 by admin

As I come off this year’s Writer’s Digest Conference, I am thinking about how fortunate I am. I get to do work that I love, and when I spend time around other writers, I am among incredibly generous and supportive people. As author Steven James said during his “Story Trumps Structure” workshop, we are in a rare business where people who could be our “competition” come and share everything they know. He likened it to Apple going to Google and sharing all their secrets.

The magic, of course, is that there is  no competition. Each of us has a unique story to tell, so the more of us the merrier. We don’t have to elbow anyone out of the way.

Back home, I am once again immersed in my projects. For one, I am reading about artists, particularly female and self-taught. Think Grandma Moses as one of many examples. I’m also learning to draw and watercolor. I’m not doing this because I want a new hobby, though I suspect I’ll keep at it because it’s fun. No, it’s a way to understand my main character better.

While I continue my research for that novel, I am living (in my mind) in late 19th-century Scotland. This story idea has sent me to Scotland twice and the old mills of Lowell, Massachusetts; introduced me to proletarian novelists such as Elizabeth Gaskell (think contemporaries of Dickens); and introduced me to genealogy.

When I wrote What She Knew, I studied the victims and perpetrators of the Madoff Ponzi Scheme. I was fascinated with the movers and shakers of Wall Street and what would happen if one of them actually grew a conscience.

In short, as a writer I get to live many lives. I get to play dress up and try on new identities. I get to peer inside the heads of my characters, who I grow to love as if they are real people and real friends.

This is a good life. A happy life. A fulfilled life. Last week I met a lot of wonderful writers who share this journey with me, and I am looking forward to getting to know all of you better.

 

Filed Under: art, fiction, women, writing Tagged With: art, research, writers, writing, writing life

Becoming Visible: On Female Characters Beyond Middle Age

January 9, 2018 by admin

A few days ago I had the pleasure of seeing the play 20th Century Blues, a tale of four women whose 40-year friendship threatens to combust over a set of photographs. We get to know their hopes, dreams, and failures, and we watch them grapple with the challenges of aging in a world that values youth. As their stories unfolded, I found myself nodding my head, laughing, and crying because I could relate.

That doesn’t happen a lot these days.

I love youth, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of these Millennial haters. In fact, whenever I feel cynical, I hang out with them. I volunteer at DonorsChoose, an organization that supports public schools, and I never fail to come away feeling energized after being around this group of positive young people.

Still, when it comes to art — plays, books, movies, etc. — I want to see my age group from time to time. As a woman, I feel like my life is much more interesting than it was when I was in my twenties. We have the scars of life, and yet we are not done. We often feel young inside, with plenty of hopes and dreams left. Yet too often we are invisible or expected to take to our rocking chairs.

My current WIP has a new working title: On Her Own Terms. I tell the story of Elaine, a wife, mother and grandmother who decides at sixty to have a career of her own. Her family loves the idea as long as it doesn’t interfere with her role as their chief cheerleader. I’m encouraged by other stories, such as Marilyn Simon Rothstein’s Lift and Separate, that are finding audiences.

In the movies, whenever we want to see a badass older woman, casting directors seem to call on Helen Mirren. Mirren is strong, sexy, and intelligent in all that she does. Judi Densch, Meryl Streep, Linda Lavin, and others are still maintaining active careers. More and more, it seems, we’re seeing women beyond middle age on the big screen, and I hope the trend continues.

We also witnessed the historic candidacy for POTUS of a grandmother…and the ageist notion that she should now “take up knitting.” Nothing wrong with knitting, by the way, but there is an assumption by some that she should now go away quietly, but not the same assumption for older male politicians.

There was a time when women our age were completely invisible. I’m not saying the tide has turned completely, but I do see hope on the horizon! And with great projects such as 20th Century Blues, hopefully we will see more.

Filed Under: aging, women Tagged With: ageism, aging, female characters, older women, women in the arts

Love Letter to the Moon #moonlover #ayurveda #fullmoon #IWSG

March 4, 2015 by admin

 

IMG_3437Moon, you know I am an inconstant lover. I commit to you, and then I get busy and harried, then forget. May this love letter to you breathe into me new commitment.

Twenty years ago, while recovering from a strange illness that left me without a voice for six weeks, I woke in the night and saw you, in your fullness, in your brilliance, and I lost my heart. I want to be with you, I said. I want the freedom to stay up at night, as I did that night, to just watch you, with nothing else to do.

It was a prayer, though I didn’t know it at the time. You did…and you answered. Every month, you waxed and waned, sometimes hiding behind clouds, other times shining over the water. You gave me a glimpse of your power and mystery, and you reached out with your glow to touch my face with support and loving care.

Yet I have been disconnected from you, moon. I lost sight of you except for an occasional glance at the night sky, when you rise over the water and command my attention. I lost you when I lost my female cycles. It never occurred to me at the time that those cycles still exist within me, and you are the key.

Women who study Ayurveda, a sister science to yoga, believe the moon is important to women. The New Moon is for introspection, they say, and the Full Moon is for clarity, power, and manifestation.

A few months ago, when I added more Ayurvedic practices to my life, I began to pay attention to you again. I notice higher levels of energy — and agitation — during the full moon. It’s no surprise to me that this week, as you wax toward your full glory, I am carting bags of compost and manure into the garden. I am weeding and feeding my fruit trees. I am writing busily and happily. I feel strong and alive.

In a few weeks, when you wane to near-darkness, I will begin my period of spring cleansing and reflection.

What if I can reconnect to your rhythms? What if I can dance once again with your ebb and flow? Do I stare stare full in the face of magic? Do I claim my right to know your mysteries?

I will walk this path to find you, and then I will know the answer to those questions. I send you my love, mysterious moon, and I glide in your river of sweet, soft energy.

For more on this month’s full moon, visit these websites. I am not into astrology, but some of them are fun anyway. Enjoy!

http://www.universetoday.com/119164/the-mini-moon-cometh-catch-the-smallest-full-moon-of-2015-this-thursday/

http://www.mysticmamma.com/full-moon-in-virgo-march-5th/

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/03/full-moon-in-virgo-head-versus-heart-tug-of-war/

***

I am grateful for finding the Insecure Writers Support Group. We’re starting the A-Z Blog Challenge in April, but already I’m feeling the love. We also have a monthly group post, and today’s the day. Thanks, all!

InsecureWritersSupportGroup2

Challenge Badge 2014

 

 

Filed Under: health, Life Changes, menopause, women Tagged With: ayurveda, cycles, full moon, menopause, women

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 12
  • Go to Next Page »

Copyright © 2023 · Author Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in