The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky by Jana Casale
The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky by Jana Casale
"When I started reading this book, I didn't want to like it... after all, it's about one fairly ordinary woman, and the chugging along of her life is the entire plot. So imagine my surprise when I kept reading, fell in love with the book, laughed a bunch, and cried at the end. Casale gets at the heart of what modern womanhood is so often like, and understands, truly, that every woman's story is worth something." - Recommended by Erika
We first meet Leda in a coffee shop on an average afternoon, notable only for the fact that it's the single occasion in her life when she will eat two scones in one day. And for the cute boy reading American Power and the New Mandarins. Leda hopes that, by engaging him, their banter will lead to romance. Their fleeting, awkward exchange stalls before flirtation blooms. But Leda's left with one imperative thought: she decides she wants to read Noam Chomsky. So she promptly buys a book and never--ever--reads it.
As the days, years, and decades of the rest of her life unfold, we see all of the things Leda does instead, from eating leftover spaghetti in her college apartment, to fumbling through the first days home with her newborn daughter, to attempting (and nearly failing) to garden in her old age. In a collage of these small moments, we see the work--both visible and invisible--of a woman trying to carve out a life of meaning. Over the course of her experiences Leda comes to the universal revelation that the best-laid-plans are not always the path to utter fulfillment and contentment, and in reality there might be no such thing. Lively and disarmingly honest, The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky is a remarkable literary feat--bracingly funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and truly feminist in its insistence that the story it tells is an essential one.