The Female Persuasion

A Novel

By: Meg Wolitzer

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times Best Seller!

“A powerful coming-of-age story that looks at ambition, friendship, identity, desire, and power from the much-needed female lens." (Bustle)

“Ultra-readable.” (Vogue)

From The New York Times best-selling author of The Interestings comes an electric novel not just about who we want to be with but who we want to be.

To be admired by someone we admire - we all yearn for this: the private, electrifying pleasure of being singled out by someone of esteem. But sometimes it can also mean entry to a new kind of life, a bigger world.

Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at 63, has been a central pillar of the women’s movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world. Upon hearing Faith speak for the first time, Greer - madly in love with her boyfriend, Cory, but still full of longing for an ambition that she can’t quite place - feels her inner world light up. And then, astonishingly, Faith invites Greer to make something out of that sense of purpose, leading Greer down the most exciting path of her life as it winds toward and away from her meant-to-be love story with Cory and the future she’d always imagined.

Charming and wise, knowing and witty, Meg Wolitzer delivers a novel about power and influence, ego and loyalty, womanhood and ambition. At its heart, The Female Persuasion is about the flame we all believe is flickering inside of us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time. It’s a story about the people who guide and the people who follow (and how those roles evolve over time), and the desire within all of us to be pulled into the light.

©2018 Meg Wolitzer (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Avid readers of Wolitzer's work won't be disappointed by this new audiobook. The subject matter is timely, and Rebecca Lowman's narration is perfect.... In fact, Lowman often crosses into that ineffable narrative zone wherein she herself disappears and the story alone takes center stage.... Lowman always returns the listener to an empathetic place with warmth and skill." (AudioFile)

"The novel could not be any more timely, even though its length and the completeness of its world suggest to me that it must have been conceived before the recent upheavals and protests.... The Female Persuasion has gone straight into my library of favorite novels ever, on a shelf next to David Copperfield, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Lonesome Dove, and Love in the Time of Cholera." (Nick Hornby)

"A dynamic, sprawling novel...Wolitzer has always been expert at capturing an emotion in a single image, and in this book she luxuriates in her skill." (The Atlantic)

"[Wolitzer is] old-fashioned in the best sense, a spiritual descendant of writers like Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë. Her novels blend philosophical matters with acute social commentary, grappling with ideas as robust as the characters she brings to life." (Wall Street Journal Magazine)