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HomeShop at BookSurgeHistoryWorldVirtuous Women |
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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 14 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
a believable portrait of the times Dec 01, 2009
By P. Taylor
I stayed up late to finish Virtuous Women last night. It interested me because I am of the same generation as the characters in the book.I didn't want it to end. Ms. Karlin captured a sense of the times, from the attitudes to the advertising, from the music to clothing. Her presentation of the ambivalence around sex and social issues is accurate--now so much of that almost seems quaint--but those ideas and attitudes were real for many young women. The girls were naive in some ways but, again, that was true for those times. They dealt with the starkest of medical things but were still tied to society's viewpoint in other areas. Their reluctance to talk about sex and personal issues was typical of those girls--and so far removed from today's young women. I hope we will hear more from Ms. Karlin.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Great read! Jun 15, 2010
By Shauna Sorensen
Great read! I read Virtuous Women in one day. I loved her characters...June, Kate, Rebecca, and Sue Ann. She quickly connected me with these young women's complex lives, so I wanted to follow them as they pursued their personal and career paths in 1950's Chicago. Attitudes, mores, and customs of this particular period were spot-on accurate and quite entertaining. I particularly appreciated that the novel was not over-burdened with boring medical procedures. With empathy and wit, Ms. Karlin captured these young women's struggles to survive and best the often harsh realities of their lives in order to find their authentic identities. I sincerely hope she has a follow-up novel in the works. I will want to buy it and read it.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
loving this book Jun 14, 2010
By reading RxR
I just started reading Virtuous Women yesterday and I can't put it down. The story of each character's personal journey unfolds so naturally that the women take on a timeless, ageless quality. I'm struck by the way that Karlin has wrapped her characters in layers of both motive and emotion; it feels like they're being revealed from the inside out. This is one of the best books that I've read lately. I look forward to introducing it to my book club.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
A contemporary Jane Austen Jun 24, 2010
By shirley palmer
Ms. Karlin has crafted a novel that draws the reader into an unfamiliar but strangely familiar world. Virtuous Women is set in a time when young women were poised between the old and the new. The old moral certainties of their mothers and the crumbling culture around them, and the beckoning of a dangerous and exciting future where the guidelines were blurred. Ms. Karlin's prose and use of language is reward enough for picking up this novel, but then comes the compelling story of five young women, their trials and relationships, their joys and tragedies, that turns out to be equally a mirror of our own time. Can't wait for Karlin's next book.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
A Tonic for the Soul Jun 23, 2010
By Betty J. Isaacs
"Island Betty"
For those of us who lived through this era, this book is a tonic for the soul.
The memories flooded back to my days as a nurse in Chicago in the 50's.
These women were so real and their hardships so true-to-life.
Karlin cares deeply about the characters, which is what writing is all about.
Highly recommended read from start to finish.
See all 14 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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