Some of the women have tragic outcomes. Witness “The Woman Who Blew Away,” a cautionary tale concerning a Kylie Jenner-ish young woman whose immense success and vacuous life untether her from reality. Or “The Woman Who Sowed Seeds of Doubt,” in which the protagonist’s discovery about her spouse leaves her with an uncertain future. But many more have HEAs (“happily ever afters,” in romance parlance), with the protagonists discovering reserves of strength to cope with inequality around the globe. (There are stories set in several different countries, including India). One older woman gets the opportunity to trade in her husband. Another finds herself afflicted with a need to eat family photographs.
One of the funniest stories concerns a woman who farts during an important presentation — only to find herself swallowed up by a black hole populated with other women in similar states of humiliation and shame. Not only does the story tap into something real, it recalls those endlessly popular women’s magazine staples in which readers share their most embarrassing moments.
One of the most affecting stories is “The Woman Who Grew Wings,” in which a young traditional Muslim mother struggles to integrate into the family’s new Western home country. Her back hurts and hurts and one day during a particularly fraught school run, she “looks over her shoulder and there they are: majestic porcelain-white feathers, over a thousand of them in each wing; she has a seven-foot wingspan.” Her children’s delight in her new appendages makes her realize that she can give them “a better life. A happy life. A safe life.”
Another powerful entry, “The Woman Who Found the World in Her Oyster,” reminds us that the definition of “woman” has broadened to much more than cisgender and heteronormative individuals. A transgender woman readies herself to attend an important, fancy and quite femme-y business lunch, and her nervousness has little to do with reading the room and everything to do with a personal relationship. It may make you put “Roar” down for a while so you can think about what the word “woman” really means and why the roars women make sound so similar.
Which demands a caveat: It’s best to read just one or two of Ahern’s fables at a time. That way you can truly appreciate their wit, pathos and imagination. The author includes Helen Reddy’s famous lyric “I am woman, hear me roar” as an epigraph, but she might just as easily have used “I’m every woman. It’s all in me.”
Bethanne Patrick is the editor, most recently, of “The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians and Other Remarkable People.”
Roar
By Cecelia Ahern
Grand Central. 288 pp. $26
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