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Margot: A Novel
Margot: A Novel | Wendell Steavenson
3 posts | 3 read | 3 to read
A moving portrait of a young womans struggle to break free of her upper-class upbringing amid the whirlwind years of the sexual revolution. Its the mid-1950s and Margot Thornsen is growing up between a Park Avenue apartment in New York and her familys sumptuous Oyster Bay estate as the presumed heir to her late grandfathers steel fortune. Her domineering mother has charted a course for herto forego education and marry wellbut Margot is more interested in microscopes and beetles and books. When a devastating fire brings the family legacy crashing down and the sexual revolution dawns, a new path opens upthe expansive world of late-1960s Radcliffe College and the intellectual, cultural, and sexual freedom Margot has been reaching for. Hailed for her intelligent and heartfelt fiction (Kirkus Reviews), Wendell Steavenson writes with grace, precision, and great psychological perception. With Margot, she has crafted a vivid portrayal of the quiet torment of young women of its era, a comically caustic mother-daughter story, and a memorable evocation of one womans passion for the wonder of science.
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merelybookish
Margot: A Novel | Wendell Steavenson
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Pickpick

Took advantage of today's snow day to finish this #arc. A coming-of-age story set in the 50s & 60s during political change & the sexual revolution. Margot grows up amidst wealth & privilege with a highly critical mother for whom marriage is the end goal. At Radcliffe, she studies science and dreams of grad school while having fuzzy relationships with men, always seeing herself as a problem. Margot's persistent uncertainty colors the novel. 👇

merelybookish It's like the whole story is told in muted tones that kept me feeling a bit detached. Overall a well-written albeit subdued character study. 1y
BarbaraBB Nice title 😀 1y
merelybookish @BarbaraBB Haha. Yes. 😄 Might have been a factor in why I wanted to read it. 1y
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akaGingerK
Margot: A Novel | Wendell Steavenson
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Panpan

The sales rep loved it. It had a strong start, so I pushed to read it before a rec deadline. But I lost steam partway through, when a side character‘s abortion-regret kept threading into the main story - and I actively disliked the style of the ending: more in a spoiler comment below. #ARC

akaGingerK Instead of ending the novel ambiguously, continuing the story longer, or even doing an epilogue, the story ends in a weird series of “what he didn‘t know” and “what she didn‘t know yet” statements about the various characters. Distancing & strange. 1y
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akaGingerK
Margot: A Novel | Wendell Steavenson

“Colors, Margot divined, were not like rainbow creations, there were more complicated than they appeared, like adults, changeable, possibly untrustworthy.” #ARC