Afternoon of a Good Woman

by Nina Bawden

Book Overview

Penelope has always done her best to be a good wife, a good mistress, a good mother, and a good magistrate. Today she is more conscious than usual of the thinness of the thread that separates good... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1860495265
• ISBN13: 9781860495267
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Virago Press (UK)
• Length: 187 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

I had trouble getting into it, but I was rewarded by continuing

Initially I had a little trouble getting into this book, I kept picking it up and putting it down. Maybe it was simply a mood thing. Anyway, once I got into the book a little more I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the book. I don't know if you would call this a story per se. Penelope has decided to leave her husband, you know that from the first line of the book. Penelope is also a magistrate and on her way to sit on the bench, while she is in the process of judging others, she is judging her own actions, her own life. Would she pass the jury test? So while Penelope has a case going on in front of her, we see flashbacks of Penelope's life that she either has guilt for or she can account for them leading up to her actions of today. Penelope has been a good woman. She's led a small but good life. But she's hit a wall, and she doesn't like where she's been, and yet she feels guilt for her latest decision and begins putting her "good woman" image on trial. This is a very interesting concept of judging your peers and comparing your own actions to things they have done. There is a lot to discuss in a book like this. It's a relatively short book, but it is packed with "moments". The ending was superb!

more readers need to know about her

A lovely book. It was published in the 1970s. But its theme--that taking note of our own goodness is a fairly selfish way of insuring our well-being--is so contemporary. It's about changing definitions of what it means to be a good woman. It has a wild sense of humor. It's unpredictable. In terms of plot, it's as well-designed as a prism. I read it in an afternoon.

Bawden's Penelope makes superb reading

I gobbled this up in a single afternoon and wanted more so I guess I'm proving myself a Bawden wench. It's not accidental our protaganist is named Penelope but it's obvious in this superb novel that our Penelope is significantly more tasked, fraught and self-conscious than was Odysseus' model spouse. She's our guide to dissecting "good" and "bad" in terms of the roles we play or don't. Finest kind. If you've not yet read Bawden, then the time is upon you.