'Florence Gordon' is Kerri's book pick

'Florence Gordon'
'Florence Gordon' by Brian Morton
Book cover courtesy of publisher

Kerri Miller's book pick this week is Brian Morton's "Florence Gordon," a novel about a septuagenarian feminist and her family.

Flavorwire was effusive in its review:

The strength of Florence Gordon is that it's sharply plugged into the feminist movement and how it's changed over the years. We hear references like Gloria Steinem, The New Inquiry, and Feministing.com: "she went online... and started vigorously correcting the errors of the young. For a while she felt alive -- not just alive, but unconquerable." And we see how feminism as a movement has changed, how these evergreen issues have traveled from "first wave" to "third wave," from bra-burning to sex positivity, and beyond, from Florence to Janine down to Emily. It's specific to the experience of these women, who are, granted, part of a rarefied Upper West Side orbit that Morton knows well. In fact, Morton has done his homework so well throughout the book regarding the many strains of feminism that a glib example of, for lack of a better description, "Jezebel-era feminism" that's important to the book's movement rings hollow and off-key, embodied by a feminist speech that ends with, "Bitches, let's party!"

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