Books, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Novel

The Radcliffe Ladies’ Reading Club by Julia Bryan Thomas is a character-driven historical fiction with feminist elements (3.5/5 stars)

Ashleah
The Radcliffe Ladies’ Reading Club
by Julia Bryan Thomas
narrated by Tanya Eby
(post may contain affiliate links)

The Radcliffe Ladies’ Reading Club by Julia Bryan Thomas is a character-driven historical fiction with feminist elements. I listened to the audiobook, which clocks in at a little over eight and a half hours and is narrated by Tanya Eby. We alternate points-of-view between five main characters.

Alice Campbell arrives Massachusetts alone, determined to turn a disheveled storefront into an amazing book store. Once open, the Cambridge Bookshop hosts a monthly book club. New Radcliffe college students Tess, Caroline, Evie, and Merritt, read books with feminist overtones in the reading club.

This book was a little slow to start, but in the end I enjoyed it. If you like slice of life kind of books–or character-driven stories–you may like this as well.

All of the girls we follow have much different backstories, but they all have familial and societal expectations on their shoulders and dreams that might not align with one or perhaps both.

Alice chose the books for the book club to help talk to the girls about what kind of people they wanted to be by looking at the different ways to be a women. The scenes where they were discussing the books felt true to life for me.

The books that are read in the book club include:

– Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte,
– A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf,
– The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton,
– Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy,
– The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald,
– Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and
– Emma by Jane Austen.

For a book being set in the mid-1950s, I was kind of disappointed there was no talk of any events from the civil rights movement. All of the characters we follow in this book are white women, and the only people of color appear to be staff members.

CW: domestic abuse, assault, sexual violence, dissociation, sex shaming, misogyny, depression, bullying, alcoholism

I received a copy of this book to review. Thank you to Tantor Media for the advanced listening copy. All opinions contained herein are my own.

If you want to see more from me, check out my Bookstagram, TheStoryGraph, or Twitter.

Unknown's avatar

Published by Ashleah

Animal lover, badass knitter, and quite a good cook.

Leave a comment