Roar

February 18, 2019
Ahern’s fantastic collection features stories of unnamed women facing modern life and its attendant difficulties, each told with fablesque twists. In “The Woman Who Returned and Exchanged Her Husband,” men are literally on the market, able to be bought, returned, and exchanged. In “The Woman Who Was Kept on the Shelf,” a woman spends half her life sitting on a shelf her beloved husband builds for her next to his other trophies. And in “The Woman Who Was Swallowed Up by the Floor and Who Met Lots of Other Women Down There Too,” a woman mortified while giving a presentation is literally swallowed up by the floor, falling into a black hole where other embarrassed women are working up the courage to climb back. Ahern’s women are by turns insecure and ambitious, quiet and challenging, as they struggle with careers, marriages, parenting, and social structures beyond their control. Ahern (P.S., I Love You) blends magical realism with keen observations about contemporary gender dynamics, offering readers a sharp selection of nuanced parables encouraging bravery, compassion, and self-reliance.

March 1, 2019

This collection includes 30 stories, ranging from four to seven pages. Each satirical selection varies in tone from whimsical to humorous to provocative. Every title starts with "The Woman Who...," such as "The Woman Who Was Fed by a Duck" to "The Woman Who Had a Strong Suit." The unnamed women face their challenges and relatable dilemmas. In "The Woman Who Blew Away," the risks of excessive dependence on social media are highlighted. In another story, a tongue-tied heroine relates her fear of public speaking. An older woman desperately fears invisibility in "The Woman Who Slowly Disappeared." Some stories are surprisingly realistic; others are allegorical fables or surreal futuristic statements. Although not each piece is entirely successful, Ahern (PS, I Love You; Love, Rosie) offers many that clearly hit home. Readers get to experience and inhabit these situations through these feminist sketches. VERDICT Bold, imaginative, eclectic sketches feature women at the crossroads. Their resilience when faced with hardship and their methods of overcoming obstacles help to create a thoroughly challenging, pertinent, and ultimately uplifting read.--Andrea Tarr, Corona P.L., CA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2019
As they near 60, smart, savvy women become increasingly invisible in our ageist society. Who can diagnose, much less fix, maladies of a sociocultural nature?Acutely attuned to the subtle sexism, ageism, racism, and every other -ism constricting women's live, Ahern (Perfect, 2017, etc.) returns with a collection of curiously delightful fables imagining what would happen if the emotional trials of women's lives manifested in reality. Each tale's protagonist is simply named "the woman," letting each story resonate as simultaneously personal and universal. With echoes of Kafka's Metamorphosis and Sexton's Transformations, Ahern lets each of her protagonists physically manifest the tribulation that social, cultural, and familial expectations have pushed her to internalize. A woman who has escaped a war zone only to face relentless discrimination, particularly from the wealthy tennis moms at her children's school, grows gorgeous wings. A young mother of three, struggling to balance the demands of children, husband, and work, suddenly finds herself covered in inexplicable bite marks, as if she were being eaten alive by her never-quite-fulfilled responsibilities. In a fantastic world in which women can buy, return, and exchange husbands, one empty nester faces the difficult decision of whether to accept her flawed husband and their imperfect love. In a dystopian work in which gender roles are enforced through a police state, one woman strives to make a difference for her child, who may not easily fit in such a binary world. And in "The Woman Who Roared," multiple women, from multiple walks of life, all roar back at a stifling world, channeling their inner Helen Reddys, who, of course, announced, "I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore."A sharp, breathtaking collection of fables.

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March 15, 2019
Irish scribe Ahern, known for romantic magical realist novels like There's No Place Like Here (2008) and Thanks for the Memories (2009), offers 30 short stories that explore the plight of women today in clever and sometimes frighteningly literal ways. In the first, a woman entering middle age is contending with a rare disorder that makes her actually invisible to those around her. In another, a young mother suffers mysterious, painful bites after she leaves her children in day care to return to work. Ahern cleverly turns the abortion debate upside down by having a man seeking a vasectomy facing down a panel of women who intend to counsel him out of his decision as another woman protests outside, determined to Guard Gonads. Even as she limns women's experiences, Ahern cheekily cautions against generalizations, as when two women encounter each other while walking around in their husband's shoes, but as one realizes, it only gives them insight into the one specific man the shoes belong to, not all men. A winning collection of modern-day fables.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)