Women like us

the long version

Women Like Us traces the lives of four women from their undergraduate days at Sarah Lawrence College in the late 1950s through the colorful and varied histories of their boyfriends, jobs, husbands, children, divorces, friendships, rivalries, failures, and successes to the present. It is a novel brimming with the lives of a group of women caught between two generations: too restless for the pieties of the fifties, too early for the revolution of the sixties. In rejecting Ben for the beautiful but feckless Gerrit, Daisy establishes a pattern of "all for love" that, despite her talent and intelligence, will haunt her life. Gina, the class square, focuses on her career rather than love. Franca's marriage collapses under the weight of children and her husband's experimentation with open marriage. Delphine, the leader of the clique, astonishes all by marrying before her graduation. Women Like Us captures the lives of a generation of women who at thirty were overtaken by the feminist revolution, when all the rules changed, and who have been running to catch up ever since. In the tradition of Marilyn French, Erica Jong, Judith Rossner, and Gail Godwin, Erica Abeel has written an unforgettable story; in it, every woman is sure to recognize something of her own life.