Made it ~50 pages and it’s just not going to happen for me. I wanted to like this - but I’m failing to connect in any way. Thanks for the opportunity to review.

What's interesting about this book is that it was originally published in 1984, and this is a 2019 rerelease. I'm guessing the rerelease coincides with the popularity of books like Mrs. Everything, which also profile women coming of age during a similar time period. Having that context, some of the characters' actions and behaviors and more understandable, though not especially forgivable.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

This novel about a group of women who meet as freshmen at Radcliffe in the 1940s was an interesting take on female friendships and how they can change over the years. The book traces the women over the decades and how they transform and grow. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance reader copy.

The women in Alice Adams' SUPERIOR WOMEN certainly do think they are 'superior.' And they are really not. They are in turn ordinary, awful, bland, and absolutely normal women. It doesn't make for a particularly compelling story, because they can be so bland it's hard to even enjoy rooting against them.

SUPERIOR WOMEN is the story of Megan, Lavinia, Peg, and Cathy who meet as freshmen at Radcliffe College in 1942. It's hard to tell if they ever actually like each other enough to actually qualify for the definition of 'good friends' but they remain somewhat inexplicably dedicated to each other for forty years, i.e. the span of Adams' novel. Dedicated might not be the right word either. It's more like they 'use' each other, find some deeper meaning in themselves because they count the other three as 'friends.' There was one scene early on where Peg or Cathy, by far the two most interesting of the four... and the two who get the least attention from Adams, remembers reading books as a child where a there were always four friends, each of whom ticked some box and she decides they fit that. That's a good summary of the story.

The novel was originally published in 1985 and Alice Adams was a graduate of Radcliffe College so she was writing what she knew. And, from the perspective of 2020, what she knew was not good.

Lavinia especially is utterly offensive, and I feel like she would have been equally as offensive in 1942 and 1982 as she is in 2020. She's a blatantly racist, unapologetically anti-Semtitic who makes herself feel better by making others feel smaller. Even her so-called friends. Peg becomes Peglet, she's certain and horrified Cathy might be a lesbian, and she constantly thinks of, and outright says, that Megan is fat and oversexed. I don't think Alice Adams meant for the reader to like Lavinia, the wealthy daughter of the South, but I do wish she'd spent less time on her. Or used less stereotypes, offensive names, and outright slurs.

Megan is the 'superior woman' we meet first, falling head over heels for a college boy while she's in high school. She actually moves from California to attend Radcliffe in Massachusetts to be near him. Megan should be a progressive, liberated woman. That's how she should come off. She becomes a force in her field but never marries or has children. She has lovers, lovers who last decades on-and-off, and she is the best friend to the other three. But... she's also horrible to her parents and awfully self-centered.

I don't know what life was like at Radcliffe College in the 1940s or what the lives of definitely upper middle class women was between the 1940s and the 1980s, so I can't say if this story is outlandish or exaggerated. It feels like it is. But I can't judge on accuracy, like whether or not three of four friends might've had flings with the same man thirty years after college. What I can judge on is how it reads as a novel.

And that's... passable.

There was too much back-and-forth between scenes. A chapter would start with Megan visiting Cathy and suddenly she's in bed with Jackson before it's back to Cathy?

But basically, everything seemed exaggerated and, therefore, had to believe.

(I received a copy of SUPERIOR WOMEN through NetGalley and Scribner in exchange for an honest and original review.)

This is a reprint of a book first published in 1984. Alice Adams tells the story of four women who meet at Radcliffe and whose lives continue to intersect over the following decades. The women are all intelligent, “superior” women, whose ambitions when they leave for college are wide-ranging for their time (post WW II in the 40’s). This book read well for me as a historical novel, with its insights into the values and mores expected of women in this time.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

Superior Women is a fantastic and somewhat ironically-named novel. It is centered around Megan, who in 1943 California, meets a college boy from New England and decides that she's in love with him. Really, she's in love with the idea of liberating herself from poverty and Palo Alto. She gets into Radcliffe and meets quiet, brilliant Janet; snobbish, beautiful Lavinia; devout, sarcastic Cathy; and hearty, maternal Peg. Alice Adams follows these five well-educated women through the twists and turns that life throws at them over the next 4 decades. Adams' historical details are well-researched. Turning points such as World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and Watergate play supporting roles.

Adams lingers over letting us get to know these characters as college girls. In some form or fashion, each one dates and has some form of erotic awakening. Connections are formed. Some become lifelong friends; others, lifelong frenemies. The novel depends on the 5 women staying at least somewhat in touch with each other, their friends, and friends of friends. This makes the novel feel a little claustrophobic, but also keeps the cast of characters manageable. The details of their post-college lives unspool almost jarringly fast compared to the initial college chapters. They marry (or don't), divorce, have babies (or not), fall in and out of love, rise in careers, get involved in politics, get sick, experience physical changes, and travel. Generation X and Millennial readers can be forgiven for a bit of jealousy over how affordable housing in New York City, San Francisco, or Paris is and the relative ease of finding a good job out of college.

If you like historical novels and novels of love and manners, you'll enjoy Superior Women. At points, you'll root for the characters, want to slap them, cry for them, and be surprised by them. In that way, they're not so different from most circles of women.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Female friendship throughout the years. Beginning in the early 1940’s. I lost interest in this one quickly and didn’t finish it.

This book is about four women who meet when they start.college at Radcliffe. It follows them from the world war two years through the 1980's. They remain friends even though they lead very different lives. I love reading about female friendships especially when it is so well written. This is a reissue that comes at a good time to compare how far we have come and how far we still have to go. I am an older reader so I may have enjoyed this more than a younger person would but I highly recommend it to anyone who likes women's fiction.

Superior Women follows the lives of four women from their first meeting at Radcliffe in the waning days of World War II though the boom years of the 1950s, the Civil Rights movement and the divisions caused by the Vietnam War.

Lavinia is the self-styled group leader. Aristocratic and beautiful, she marries for money and spends the rest of her life looking for love and understanding.

Peg, the wealthiest of the four, struggles to fit in and only finds her identity later in life.

Cathy is a shy conservative Catholic girl whose devotion to her religion costs her the relationship she desires and leads her into great sorrow.

Megan, the outsider from California, is the consummate career woman. A successful editor, she climbs the corporate ladder to become independently wealthy while choosing to remain single.

While I enjoyed reading Superior Women, I think I would have enjoyed it more when it was originally published in 1984. In the Me Too era, the discrimination faced by women in earlier decades is evident and painful. The casual caste system followed by the upper class in Boston and New York is off-putting. I found some of the descriptive language used in referring to women and African Americans racist, misogynistic and disturbing. It is amazing to see how far women have come since then in terms of equality and the distance still left to cover.

Superior Women by Alice Adams is a historical fiction novel following the lives of 4 women who attended college together.

While this book is a combination of a few things I love (historical fiction spanning decades focused on female characters), I really struggled with this one. It dragged in places where I wanted to be interested and engaged, and I found myself disliking most of the characters at any given time. There were some moments I liked, but I didn't love this book.

I will say that there's a character named Megan who works for a publishing company in NYC, which is something really want to do, so that was neat!

SUPERIOR WOMEN was a completely wonderful, unexpected surprise. When I started it, I was unaware that Alice Adams had passed away almost 20 years ago, and that this was originally published in 1984. The book is being reissued in December, and I hope it gets the due it deserves because it is an epic journey through the 20th century following 5 upper class women who meet in college and then whose lives veer off in completely and surprising directions.

Adams’ writing is so fun and easy to digest. The plot moves quickly and it was impossible to guess where the story was going. All of the characters are well developed and I adored following their lives from college to their 50s. I could very rarely see any of the big developments coming, and that made the book really hard to put down.

The book is whey stuck in the past though, and it can be very jarring for 2019 readers to see the brazen language the characters use to describe each other. It makes the characters who you really hate even more worse, so much so that you’ll want to scream at them through the page. I felt very emotional about the book and the women by the end, wanting them to be happy and content, dealing with the ups and downs of the 20th century.

I can see how this reissue is perfect timing. The women, starting college in the 1940s and ending in their 50s in 1980s, go through many of the same things women so today. The trend of groups of female friends who meet in college is still going strong, and the parallels of life from the 1970s/80s that the women deal with regarding social issues is eerily prescient. I truly and unexpectedly loved this book, and so glad I went off my well beaten course of only reading new, contemporary releases because I would have easily missed this gem.

Incisive and thoughtful, SUPERIOR WOMEN delivers both a poignant portrait of a time and place and a marker for today's woman to see not only how far we've come...but how far we have yet to go.

Alice Adams died over twenty years ago. This book was published in 1984. It was an interesting read. The dialogue and features of the book seem so long ago, especially telephone operators. I enjoyed reading about a time that I remember, a life with no social media, no internet, and no cell phones. I thought the characters were engaging and the time era covered was engrossing. Obviously, this is a reprint edition being released.

Thank you Netgalley for sending me this arc. I will be reviewing this book in the near future with an honest rating and review.

These women in this book represent a lot of us. I think this is a book that can stand through the times. There are moments and ideas about love, marriage, aging and living well that are absolutely worth reading. Although the friends' time in college is somewhat superficial and unenlightening as I'm sure some of us can relate to, their later years of career and commitment are especially poignant.
Being a woman I connected with these characters and rooted for them. There are so many things that have stayed the same for women and so many things that we have achieved.

A novel about four Radcliffe (the female college later incorporated into Harvard) girls from different walks of life who begin college together in the early forties. The story follows the four girls/women on through four decades of dramatic change both in the world around them and in themselves. The birds eye focus is on Megan, a young Californian embarrassed by her parents near poverty and illiteracy. She awkwardly finds friends and lovers as moves from Cambridge to Paris and then settles in New York.
I loved Alice Adams prose because, in every conversation, every piece of dialogue, she relates the undertone and subtext. "A" said "X" but she meant "Y." Her acute perceptions of men, women, societal expectations, prejudices, and norms heighten the promise of this book. Adams wastes no words in her clear, sharp prose. This is a remarkable book, remarkably well written..

I absolutely love books like this. I love reading about women in the past especially when the writing is stark, unapologetic, and raw. Guess this is why my favorite subjects in school have always been English and History. Because without one you cannot have the other and without the other the read is often dry and tough to pay attention to.

Superior Women is about superior women. Women who are very much real, problematic, and flawed like the rest of us. We follow five young women at Radcliffe college and we traverse through time with them. There are bumps along the way as with anybody's life but it's fun to seemingly go through it with them and learn about how each character changes and grows along the way.

This book is slow at times, especially in the beginning but the writing is superb and the characters feel tangible. Definitely a great book to read if you're a fan of womens fiction like me.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy of my ARC. All opinions are my own.

How did I miss this gem when it was first published? Adams manages to take the stereotypical story of 4 housemates from an elite woman’s college, in this case Radcliffe and create an elegant beautiful novel.

Utilizing archetypal characters, and despite it being written in the 1980’s, it remains vibrant and engaging. Obviously, an example of the women’s friendship genre, it makes for an interesting and shockingly not very dated read. For those of us that loved THE GROUP and THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, this will be totally enjoyable. Perhaps, as an older reader, it appealed to me more than it might to those who are younger

There are timely references to racial issues and anti-Semitism, and there sure was plenty of sex back then, LOL.

I will heartily recommend it to book groups and women’s studies seminars. Lots to discuss.

Thanks Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this delightful woman’s novel.

Alice Adams Superior Women a true classic it is passed down from one generation of women to the next.A group of women meet at Radcliffe from there we follow their lives stories heartache happiness struggle a wonderful meaningful novel. #netgalley#scribners