The Nature of Things

"Women in particular ... I want you to get more involved. Because men have been getting on my nerves lately." - Barack Obama hosting a town hall in Johannesburg this week. Meg Wolitzer has written a book about feminism whose timeliness can hardly be overemphasized. Indeed, its narrative in many ways seems wholly lifted from the news stories of the day. We have the naive young college freshman named Greer Kadetsky who is the novel's primary protagonist. Greer had hoped to be going to an Ivy League college, but because of her incompetent parents' failure to complete all necessary forms on time, she ends up going to second-rate Ryland College, while her long-time boyfriend, Cory, goes to Princeton. Though her college may be second-rate, she makes a first-rate friend in a queer girl named Zee Eisenstat. Zee convinces Greer to go with her to a party at a frat house on campus and it is there that the all too familiar story of sexual assault takes place. Greer is forcefully ...