I remember reading somewhere that you're supposed to judge a book by what it is, rather than what you wanted it to be. I wanted this to be something it wasn't.
Most of the book was about reproductive medical history. In the introduction, the author acknowledged the existence of trans people but mostly used "woman" to mean "person with a gestational reproductive system" throughout. Other than a very short (a page? two?) mention of the AIDS crisis, there was no discussion of queerness or transness outside of the introduction, even though homosexuality was considered a mental illness until the 1970s; certainly some of the people subjected to (body specific medical torture) were what we would now call queer or trans, but that went unacknowledged.
That seems like a pretty big omission to me.
I was also surprised that there's only a paragraph on anorexia nervousa. Maybe eating disorders were having a cultural moment when I was a teenager (mid- to late-00s), but I expected there would be more about the history of anorexia and bulimia in a history of women and medicine.
Instead, the focus was mostly on reproductive systems until the section on 1940s-Present. I guess it's true that medicine treated (women) as reproductive vessels first and foremost; if it didn't effect reproduction, it was ignored? or assumed to be somehow related to reproductive organs, especially the uterus, with all its supposed wanderings and misbehavior. The last chapter was about autoimmune disorders, which the author has (lupus); I guess I expected a more detailed history of modern medicine and less of an overview of women and medicine, starting in Ancient Greece and continuing through to today in the U.K. and U.S.
Oh, and is "ethnically diverse" the U.K. way of saying "people of color" or something? The author frequently would say things like "Black, Asian, and ethnically diverse women," which felt odd to me. Is this a way of including Travellers and (European) Jewish women? She never mentioned any medical concerns specific to those groups, like Tay-Sachs or anything.
This book took the "great (white) men of history" approach, but with more women; those women were mostly white and wealthy, with a few here and there who were women of color or working class or poor. Part of that is who has access to medical schools, once those start being a thing, and the means to open a birth control clinic, or run a feminist printing press, and so on, but some of it is also who/what you choose to research or write about.
I was ~80% done when I realized this was not going to be the book that I wanted it to be, but it was interesting enough - and I was close enough to done - to keep going. I don't know if I would recommend it, though; not for what I was looking for, but maybe a broad overview with an oddly narrow lens (again, no queerness/transness).
I almost didn't write anything about The Parker Inheritance. What is there to say? It was so good. I finished it on 2/9, and it's already a contender for "best book I read in 2022." I loved how the author (Varian Johnson) wove together the present day and historical timelines so the info drops were timed just right.
My sister's favorite book growing up was The Westing Game. I never got into it, but I keep pestering her to read The Parker Inheritance.
I read the audiobook, and the narrator was great. Listening every morning got me to work on time. I couldn't wait to put in my earbuds and find out what happened next. (I always have a "commute" audiobook that I only read when I'm out for a walk.) It added a layer of realism to the story, too; there's just a way someone from North Carolina says "Miss So-and-so" that I (from New England) just don't.
Note to self: write annotations no later than 24 hours after I finish reading. I can't remember everything I thought about The Parker Inheritance. That's OK; I'll probably reread it sometime soon-ish.
You Must Not Miss was face-out in the YA section at my local public library last weekend. The hardcover has a tag line that's, like, "Imagine the perfect place. Imagine the perfect family. Imagine the perfect revenge." So I picked it up, because it sounded like it was either going to be about a paracosm (think Terabithia) or it was a YA triller.
…turns out it's both!
I read it all on Saturday, and I can't stop thinking about it. (Spoilers below the cut.)
Magpie feeds her enemies to a monster in the paracosm/maybe the paracosm itself?