A provocative and wide-ranging conversation between two distinctive women-one American and one French-on the dilemmas, rewards, and demands of womanhood.
LISA ALTHER was born in 1944 in Tennessee. She is widely known for
her first novel,Kinflicks(1975), a feminist coming-of-age narrative
that broke new ground in terms of what could be written and talked
about. She is the author of seven additional works of fiction, a
memoir, and a narrative history of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Her
books have been published in seventeen languages and have appeared
on bestseller lists worldwide.
FRAN OISE GILOT was born in 1921 in Paris. She was a part of the
emerging School of Paris. In 1943 she met Pablo Picasso, with whom
she had a decade-long relationship.She is the author of the
bestsellingLife with Picasso, which has been translated into more
than a dozen languages;Matisse and Picasso;and other books. She
married the French painter Luc Simon and later the American vaccine
pioneer Jonas Salk. Gilot's workis included in the collections of
many museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York. She was made Chevalier and then Officier de la
Legion d'honneur.
“[Alther and Gilot] provide vivid conclusions from their lived
experience ... About Women gives you a feeling of access to
the shared salon of two brilliant women ... [it] whets one’s
appetite for good talk about women’s lives.”
—Phyllis Rose, New York Times Book Review
"About Women is full of poignant microhistories and insightful
observations about art, culture, and ideology ... History and
individual experience are never wholly disentangled, and in these
pages their intersection has a pulse ... Gilot and Alther are
highly intelligent, thoughtful and perceptive."
—Anna Wiener, New Republic
"Fascinating as a historical document, a real-time look at two
women as they wrestle with and negotiate the tenets of modern
feminism in their own lives ... [This] kind of discourse
between two women analyzing their own experiences of their own
lives feels like precisely what feminists should celebrate."
—Julia Felsenthal, Vogue.com
"In this tribute to the length and quality of their friendship, the
authors adeptly draw one another out, challenge each other, and
build on each other’s ideas. The conversation is consistently
funny, interesting, and thoughtful."
—Publishers Weekly
"The narrative is loose and fluid, giving readers an inside look
into the personal lives of these two women as they converse about
religion, sex, or child-rearing over cups of tea or glasses of wine
... Entertaining, informative conversations between two women
friends."
—Kirkus Reviews
"I’ve often wondered about sitting at a banquet of the gods,
listening to them talk. It’s the sound of heaven. But it comes to
humming life in About Women, where two of the most interesting
women of our time, the novelist Lisa Alther and the painter (and
former partner of Picasso) Françoise Gilot, engage in a
wide-ranging and bracing conversation on the experience of
womanhood. Their backgrounds could not be less similar; but they
trade stories and repeatedly converge in stunning ways to illumine
the ways that women love and work, find meaning in their daily
lives, balance tradition and innovation. Both are highly creative
women, and they rub against each other in exactly the right ways,
shedding a brilliant fantail of sparks. I’ll read this book again
and again."
—Jay Parini, author of The Last Station
"Reading About Women is a privilege. I felt as if I were
eavesdropping on a juicy private conversation between two of the
cleverest, most sophisticated cultural figures in the Western
world. Besides coming to know Alther's and Gilot’s idiosyncratic
families of origin and the wellsprings of their respective creative
careers, I was challenged to reconsider the connection between
fashion and feminism, the difference between Catholics and
Episcopalians, between France, England, and the American South,
between harassment and flirting, and why, when they disagreed with
each other, they both made sense to me. By the end of this feast of
a book, I thought about their remarkable friendship and felt
envy."
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin, author of Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul
Mate and a founding editor of Ms. magazine
"A writer and an artist hold a conversation and ask the big
question: how can women live meaningful and creative lives?
Everything is discussed: philosophy, love, art, literature,
childhood, and fashion are examined from different perspectives.
The result is an intimate, edifying, and fascinating book."
—Madeleine Kunin, former governor of Vermont and author of The New
Feminist Agenda
"The best eavesdropping book I've ever read." —Steve Fischer,
Executive Director, New England Independent Booksellers Association
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