When I went on Project Gutenberg, this book had just been uploaded in its digital form. The title, "The Warrior Girls", and the red cover with bold gold lettering immediately caught my eye. I had images in my head of either girls that had been warriors (like Mulan), or girls that were fighting against magnificent and fearsome creatures. That is not at all what I've gotten since I started this book.
With all fairness, the title is not misleading, the book is indeed about girls, just reaching the cusp of their teen years, during the turn of the century. They're fighting to slay their monsters, but the monsters in this book are the monsters of bad habits. The main protagonist is a girl named Winnifred Burton, whose friends call her Winnie. She is small, and she spends far too much time reading and indulging in things, and not paying attention to her studies. Her and her friends, who previously had a form of a club, decide to change the mission of the club from eating butterscotch, to tackling their personality defects.
For many people, the realization that there aren't any bloody battles and wars, would have them put the book down. I decided to give it a try, and as of the writing of this entry, I'm just over halfway through the book. It's not at all what I expected, and it's much more of a slice of turn-of-the-century life, and trying to fight things like sloth, greed.
There was one girl, Ernestine, that the other young women weren't sure they wanted to include in their group because she lived in an apartment with her father, and she wasn't wealthy, and some of the other girls didn't think she was from a "good family". (SPOILER ALERT) It took the main character's mother explaining that the young woman had been from a good family "old family" of New York, and her father had been an alcoholic that her mother left for the girls to want to be nice and associated with. I just thought that it was disgusting that the parents are worried about whether the family of their child's friend is upstanding. Why does it matter? There's only one mention of Black people in the book, where the school has a play, and one of the little girls does blackface to be the character.
The best part of the book is that there are a lot of archaic words that I am learning. I'm actually highlighting and making notes about them.
As of right now, this is a book I would only recommend to someone that enjoys slice-of-life novels. I'm really hoping the author expands a bit more on the characters, because the majority of the secondary ones are the ones that are a bit more interesting. Hopefully I will have more to add when I finish this book, and hopefully it'll meet my expectations about the next parts.
UPDATE:
I finished the book, and I have to say, there were parts that annoy me, and there was an entire part that annoyed me so much that I kept sucking my teeth. The book is a very cute slice of life, however that is the biggest appeal. Some of the "giants" that the young ladies have battled do translate in to life nowadays, but some of them just feel sad and outdated. Others are just annoying and offend my feminist point of view on life. Then there is something that just offended me as a person that has grieved.
Now I'm not being mean, a lot of the book was nice, at least seeing what White people with the means did with their time in Cincinatti at the turn of the century. If these are things that fascinate you, you'll enjoy this book.
