These Women

A great concept for a timely story, but with Pochoda\’s fiction, it\’s impossible for a total buy-in from the reader. There always seems to be something missing. With this book, I think it was the lack of character development and the somewhat stereotyped \”ghetto\” women of west L.A. she features. The landscape of the city of Los Angeles is well-developed; Pochoda always manages to bring Southern California alive in her fiction. I read Wonder Valley several years ago when it was first published (and touted as one of the best books of the year), and although the desert landscape was vividly portrayed, the characters and their stories fell flat. I have the same complaint for These Women. In the age of #metoo, it seems every writer wants to make a statement about the mistreatment, abuse, neglect of women in modern culture, and Pochoda attempts to show how the LAPD failed to catch a serial killer because his victims were prostitutes whom society doesn\’t really \”see\” or care about. While this is a tragedy, and a story worth telling, Pochoda misses the mark on giving her hard-living female characters any real humanity. One must assume that being a sex worker is a hard life and these women are subject to all kinds of potential hardships in this kind of life on the streets. I\’m sure that it\’s a lifestyle that hardens many, but finding the edge of humanity in characters from any walk of life is the real task of an author who wants to make a social and political impact. Pochoda doesn\’t do this. None of her characters are likeable, even the mother mourning her dead daughter who was one of the serial killer\’s victims. If you can\’t find some shred of light or common ground in a character, it\’s hard to invest in their story. This is what makes a book really work and impact the reader. I never find Pochoda\’s characters relatable or likeable. Even Marella who isn\’t a sex worker or stripper, but a performance artist who pours paint on her nude body in order to fight against the victimization of women. Huh? From a drug-snorting stripper who is rude to everyone she encounters, to a performance artist with the vocabulary of Bertol Brecht, the characters are just not entirely real or relatable to most women who fall somewhere in the middle of this divide. I want to like Pochoda but I don\’t think I\’ll read anything else from her. She went to Harvard and seems very much another Ivy-league, privileged liberal who is desperate to make a statement for social justice to show she \”is down with helping people who didn\’t go to Harvard,\” but she is so disconnected from the people she wants to write about, it really shows in her lifeless characters.

I found out that the creator of The Handmaid\’s Tales show was going to be creating a new show based on this book. I decided immediately to buy it with no regrets; I downloaded it and finished the entire book in less than 24 hours. The way it consumes you and leaves you craving more wonderful. I will definitely watch the show, but I like to read the books first. The book is usually better than the shows in my opinion, but I will still dedicate my time to viewing this!

I tore through this book and loved how it placed displaced women firmly at the centre without condescension. I was invested in each woman and the area in which they lived and worked. I wish I could read this again like the first time. I’m not sure I took a breath until the end. Sure it’s a murder mystery but it is also pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the genre. I’m about to do a deep dive into her other books now. Grateful for this authors way of thinking and viewing the world.

Hookers. Not worth worrying about by the police, even if a few have their throats cut, their heads in plastic bags and discarded in the middle of LA on Western. We are inside their heads. Eventually someone in the police starts to listen, starts to care. Some one has a daughter who realizes that someone close cares more than he should. Then it all unravels. Quite a ride!

How to survive as a woman in today\’s world? How to negotiate the violence that is all around us? How to be heard–as a person, as a woman–when even other women will not listen to you? These are some of the ideas explored in Ivy Pochoda\’s tour de force, These Women. At first, this book was so far from what I was expecting, based on the advertising blurbs, that I thought I had ordered the wrong book. After reading it, I can see that an advertising department might have trouble categorizing this book, because it\’s like nothing I\’ve ever read before. This is not \”a serial killer thriller\”. It starts off at a slow burn and at first seems confusing and disjointed. It doesn\’t take long to get in the rhythm of the writing and the story–told from five distinctive viewpoints. About 60 pages in, you realize that Ms. Pochoda has taken a fairly \”common\” serial killer story, turned it upside down, shaken it around, and then turned it inside out, just for good measure. She successfully maintains this high wire act till the last page. The women are connected, the story is brought to a satisfying conclusion. Don\’t miss this intriguing, thought provoking masterpiece.

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