Expansive, inclusive and elegantly woven ... A behemoth you may be inclined to skim, until you realize you’re actually luxuriating in every word ... Gregory has a novelist’s sense for story, character and moments of levity.
Gregory makes a persuasive argument that women have always been successfully subversive in small ways ... Gregory has the novelist’s eye for the quirky and the vivid; the wryness of a confident narrator. Normal Women, with its 50 pages of notes, is a lasting work of social history in which the wealth of detail is perhaps its flaw: the vast subject matter, structured chronologically, can get samey over 900 years.
This new nonfiction work strives to restore them to their rightful place in history, and in so doing radically reframe our national story. To an impressive extent, it succeeds.
Normal Women, the product of ten years of research, is compelling, full of wonderful detail, and makes a magisterial contribution to women’s public history.
A tour de force of research ... Particularly enlightening is Gregory’s exploration of Victorian society ... A highly instructive, exhaustive study that reveals the realities behind “ideal” or “inferior” designations of women.
