The Female Persuasion (by Meg Wolitzer)+

I liked, but did not love, The Interestings, but the premise of The Female Persuasion (young feminist is mentored by older feminist) and the rainbow stripey cover and the fact that I now have a library card and the fact that I have read a lot of man-books this year all nudged me towards reading this, and I'm glad I did. 

Nothing in this book, particularly the exploration of different generations of feminism, is particularly thought-provoking or earth-shattering. (Intersectional feminism gets particularly short shrift here.) But it's a solid, entertaining story featuring well-drawn characters. Once again, as with the cast of The Interestings, Wolitzer draws them throughout decades of their lives, and I really liked all these characters as characters, and enjoyed watching them evolve.

The political backdrop is just that, a backdrop, but there are allusions to the political climate and to the Trump bomb dropping that made me wish we could go even further in time and see the characters' privileged white feminism more challenged in the era of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.

So although this isn't as challenging as maybe one would hope, it is still a solid, entertaining, likeable novel -- from my privileged white feminist perspective, of course.