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Title: Her Brilliant Career
Author: Rachel Cooke
Narrator: Jenny Funnell
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
Language: English
Release date: 03-06-14
Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: Fiction, Chick Lit
Publisher's Summary:
In her apron and rubber gloves, the woman of the Fifties has become a cultural symbol of all that we are most grateful to have sloughed off. But what if there was another side to the story? In Her Brilliant Career, Rachel Cooke tells the story of ten extraordinary women whose pioneering professional lives - and complicated private lives - paved the way for future generations.
Critic Reviews:
"Vastly entertaining, cannily researched and sharply perceptive" (Telegraph)
Members Reviews:
Unknown (to Americans) British Women of the 1950's
This book is a fascinating picture of the 1950's in Britain. Rationing (which continued well past the end of WWII), the return to a peacetime economy, and British cultural and class patterns are completely unfamiliar to most Americans. Television viewers of PBS programs, however, will find familiar themes and events, although the women profiled in the book are pretty much under the radar, even for those who think of themselves as well-informed Anglophiles "of a certain age."
I rated the book 4stars because I think it deserves to be read. It fills in the gaps in history as lived by ordinary people, without reading individual memoirs. As the author says, Elizabeth David is regarded as the British Julia Child of the 1950's and 1960's in America. But that wasn't the case in Britain, where other cookbook authors were equally well-known.
Another charm of the book is a gossipy quality - some of these women had very "interesting" lives. Family, friendships and networks of friends are shown playing major roles in determining how these women ended up where they did. It seems to me that American writers focus more on the individual's effort in charting the course of his/her life, rather than exploring the connections around the individual. For years after reading all 12 volumes in Anthony Powell's "Dance to the Music of Time", I was struck by the constant recurrence of characters in each others lives. In my life in America in the 1960's and 1970's, people were always moving on to new locations, new relationships, new interests, new music, etc. This book is of a time with the first volumes of the Powell series (which is definitely worth reading and was also made into a television series).
To conclude: Committed Anglophiles, readers interested in a deeper understanding of the post-war era in Britain, and cultural history fans would enjoy this book.
but the book is boring, at least to this American reader
Rachel Cooke should be commended for thorough research, but the book is boring, at least to this American reader.
Starts out well enough, then bogs down
The first couple of chapters were lively enough, but around the third or fourth I felt like there was so much esoteric detail on names and dates of ancillary figures, production dates of films, etc. that there was just no general interest left to it.
Five Stars
A wonderful read.
Two Stars
Not one of my favorite reads.
