Marilyn French’s seven million copy bestseller The Women’s Room crystallized the issues that ignited the women’s movement. Now the acclaimed author updates that classic with a new exploration of the truths and realities behind women’s lives. In the Name of Friendship dares to investigate how the women’s movement changed the lives of those it touched and what hurdles it left to cross. Set in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, this wise novel is a group portrait of four disparate women who forge life-altering friendships despite personalities that vary as greatly as their vocations and ages. The novel weaves together a series of family crises with the friendships that help the four women refashion their lives. Maddy, the seventy-six-year-old real estate agent and matriarch of the group, struggles with the gradual death of her angry and rebellious Vietnam-marked son; fifty-year-old Alicia fights to reconnect her gay son with her newly retired husband; seventy-year-old musician Emily strives to bridge the gap with her estranged niece right at the moment her composition career starts to finally bloom; and Jenny, the thirty-year-old painter and baby of the group, questions the life she has created with her successful painter husband and tries to decide if she wants more from life. With this unusual group of multi-generational ladies, French tells a truly rare tale about four women who accidentally come into each other’s lives and in the process form an enduring friendship. It is a story of supporting one another, of looking at the grim conflicts created by cultural expectations of women, and realizing you are not alone—truly a tale of continuing hope.
Author
She attended Hofstra University (then Hofstra College) where she also received a master's degree in English in 1964. She married Robert M. French Jr. in 1950; the couple divorced in 1967. She later attended Harvard University, earning a Ph.D in 1972. Years later she became an instructor at Hofstra University. In her work, French asserted that women's oppression is an intrinsic part of the male-dominated global culture. Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (1985) is a historical examination of the effects of patriarchy on the world. French's 1977 novel, The Women's Room, follows the lives of Mira and her friends in 1950s and 1960s America, including Val, a militant radical feminist. The novel portrays the details of the lives of women at this time and also the feminist movement of this era in the United States. At one point in the book the character Val says "all men are rapists". This quote has often been incorrectly attributed to Marilyn French herself. French's first book was a thesis on James Joyce. French was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1992. This experience was the basis for her book A Season in Hell: A Memoir (1998). She was also mentioned in the 1982 ABBA song, "The Day Before You Came". The lyrics that mentioned French were: "I must have read a while, the latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style". French died from heart failure at age 79 on May 2, 2009 in Manhattan, New York City. She is survived by her son Robert and daughter Jamie.
