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There are currently 24 member reviews
for Margot
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Susan K. (Los Angeles, CA)
Margot by Wendell Stevenson
I cannot really find anything concrete to explain my "meh" reaction to this book, but I had to struggle to finish it. Plot and characters were adequately accomplished, so perhaps it was the period setting , but it just didn't provoke a positive response. The more so in light of how gripping Lydia Millet's Dinosaurs was for me.
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Kathy (southern ME)
Disappointing
Margot is a strange, and often bleak, work of fiction. The synopsis of this book does not feel like a good reflection of it. I expected to read a story of a woman coming into her own during the women's lib/feminist atmosphere of the 60s. Steavenson lingers in Margot's childhood longer than I anticipated, and once Margot is coming of age and pursuing higher education, it often feels like she is ineffectual and not self-aware. Instead, Margot is often going in whatever direction the wind takes her. Even as her world becomes more open to gender equality, Margot is often the victim of circumstances and of the men in her life (as well as her own mother).
Steavenson is an unusual writer and I was ambivalent about her writing style. I would not characterize her writing as lyrical, yet she often uses poetry constructs like rhyming and alliteration in her descriptions. Sometimes these were effective devices, and other times they were simply distracting. Steavenson does capture the era well, but I never felt connected to Margot or sensed her as a real person, and the ending of the book left me feeling that she had not really grown/changed or succeeded in any meaningful way. Without revealing spoilers, I found the end disappointing and frustratingly irresolute. This is the only work I've read by Steavenson but I'm not sure that I would pick up another.
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Margot P. (Mandeville, LA)
Circus of emptiness
If you enjoy books about girls attempting to overcome horrible childhoods and basically failing at every attempt, then this is the book for you. Characters come and go inadvertently and there is an unnecessary abundance of "icky" sex and extremely unlikable characters. Throw in drug trips, possible rape, and a totally confusing, open-ended conclusion, and there you have Margot. Granted she does achieve some success at Radcliffe in biochemistry but this reader found the overly long scientific descriptions confusing and out of balance with the rest of the book. I suggest that if Steavenson writes a sequel, she hire a new editor. The writing fluctuates from choppy, verbless sentences to flowery, melodramatic sentences that seem neverending.
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