I Read: Three Women

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

I picked this book up because I read a description of it by someone hosting an online book club. I have no intention of joining an online book club, but the passion with which she wrote about the book was inspiring so I did a little research and decided it was something I would be interested in. I'd never heard of it previously, but she had apparently read it several times. 

I'm not sure what I was expecting going on, but there were a lot of reviews that through around the words empowering, and strong. And while I agree that the women featured in this book are strong, I'm not sure that I'd say their stories are empowering, except in the telling of them. They definitely didn't feel empowered within their stories to me.

I should explain - the book is written about three real women, with a prologue and epilogue from the author. Their stories do not connect to each other in any way in the real world but do connect in themes of love, relationship, control, and in some sense empowerment. Each of them is in love at some point during their story; they would do anything to encourage that feeling and keep it. But in all three cases, it's not necessarily the healthiest of love. Yes, that's falling into my perspective now, instead of just being a description of the text.  But when it's a book about emotion and feeling it's hard to give a straight description of what it's about without putting some of your own into it. 

In each of the stories, I found myself struggling to remember that these were real women and their true stories. Their names may have been changed but they do exist and they did have these experiences. It felt dramatic and I don't think I've ever really acknowledged that there are women who have these experiences in the world. For real. I've read about them in romance novels (which isn't that just a whole other concept - I don't know why I would ever have felt these situations were romantic when they're really all about control) and I've seen them depicted in movies. But to know that these women played these real-life roles takes some serious thought. 

I found myself rooting for them, hoping they could turn things differently, that they could take back their own control. I didn't feel like they were in a position of control in any of their situations. That they had given it away to someone else. But in the end, by telling their stories, they've regained some of it. They've empowered themselves by sharing their stories and owning them. 

There's a book club guide at the back of my copy of the book. I usually skip those. I like to ruminate on what I've read myself, and rarely remember to go back to those guides when I've completed my own self-reflection. But I skimmed through this one. I was reminded of high school, where my opinions and feelings rarely matched what the teachers thought I should be feeling and were often dismissed as being "wrong." I don't know what the right questions to ask would be, but I didn't feel like the ones in the back of this book were the right ones. I feel like the importance of this book is in the metaphor of our own lives, to see how we relate to these women, and how we might feel in similar situations.

#57-2020