The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky

Kirkus Reviews 11 Debuts You Need to Pay Attention ToHelloGiggles Books you don''t want to missBustle Books you need to know. An ambitious debut at once timely and timeless that captures the complexity and joys of modern womanhood. This novel is gem likein its precision its many facets and its containing multitudes. Following in the footsteps of Virginia Woolf Rona Jaffe Maggie Shipsteadand Sheila HetiJana Casale writes with bold assurance about the female experience.. We first meet Leda in a coffeeshop on an average afternoon notable only for the fact that its the single occasion in her life when she will eat two sconesin one day. And for the cute boy readingAmerican Power and the New Mandarins. Leda hopes that by engaging him their banter will lead to romance. Their fleeting awkward exchange stalls before flirtationblooms. But Ledas left with one imperative thought: she decides she wants to read Noam Chomsky. So she promptly buys a book and nevereverreads 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 workboth visible and invisibleof 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 toutter fulfillment and contentment and in reality there might be no such thing. Lively and disarmingly honestThe Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomskyis a remarkable literary featbracingly funny sometimes heartbreaking and truly feminist in its insistence that the story it tells is anessentialone.