Four hours but it feels like one and as soon as I leave, I cannot wait to return. What is this place where I lose time? It is the school I now attend: a pottery studio. I have been taking classes and making pottery for just over 2 years. In this place, making noise when throwing clay on a metal wheel or getting clay on clothes is normal and expected. I like the messiness of playing with clay. Using clay is hard on the body because it requires leaning over a spinning, metal wheel, but it’s worth it. The instructors demonstrate the basic steps and multiple techniques for completing the steps but eventually each potter has to decide for themselves which techniques will work for them. Pottery allows me to turn what I consider a mistake into an interesting design so that it looks like I planned the mistake. In one of my first class sessions, I was not doing well, became frustrated, and almost left the studio early. However, my instructor stepped in and asked if I wanted to try one more time so I stayed and have never left. My classmates and I support each other by sharing tips and compliments. Over time, I have learned to say “try another day” when the clay is not working well for me. 

Pottery allows me to experience both instant gratification in making different pieces (mugs, plates, bowls) within minutes but then requires patience to complete the rest of the process. After I complete the process there is nothing like looking at a piece I made and saying “I made that!” When I am using a wheel, I am not aware of anyone else in the studio or what they are doing. One time the wheel was spinning, I was forming the walls of a mug, and for 2 seconds it felt perfect – the speed of the wheel, the movement of the clay, and the placement of my fingers on the clay. It felt so strange and wonderful that I asked myself “what just happened”? 

Several of my ancestors were artisans and so I wanted to find something that I could enjoy doing with my hands. In trying to decide, I recalled visiting a friend of mine in the art studio of the college we both attended. She showed me how to throw clay on the wheel and was surprised at how quickly I learned since she was the art major and I was not. So, that is how I decided to check out pottery. 

Book Review of “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn.

This novel mirrors some aspects of a familiar tale: girl (Amy) meets boy (Nick), loses contact, reconnects, dates, and marry each other in their 30s. However, the timeline of the novel moves backwards from their 5^th anniversary to show the unravelling of their lives. They both lose their jobs as New York writers, move back to his hometown so he can care for his parents, she disappears and frames him for her murder, but she reappears and blames another man for her kidnapping. At the end of the novel, Amy continues to control his life by blackmailing him into staying married.

Amy is the only child to survive after multiple miscarriages and stillbirths. Her parents use her name and life experiences to create the title character of a very profitable book series. She resents her parents for both these situations and feels pressure to be perfect. Though her parents are child psychologists, ironically they do not see that she is mentally ill dating back to her teenage years. Nick is a Mama’s boy and has a close connection to his twin sister, but at times he thinks negatively, and admits he does, about women just like his verbally and emotionally abusive father.

Even though Nick’s voice opens the novel, Amy is the one in control. She is the active one and Nick just reacts to her. She is always intellectually miles ahead of him and that is his downfall.

Amy creates diary entries that are dated back in time to paint herself as an innocent wife who gradually begins to fear her husband. Her diary lays the groundwork for framing him for murder. Outside her diary entries however, Amy admits that for the first 2 years of their marriage, she presented herself as a wife whose greatest happiness was making her husband happy but she could not maintain that facade. Over time, she came to hate Nick for not realizing that she was putting on a front and for acting upset at having to listen to the real Amy. When she saw Nick with his mistress, she decided not to divorce him because that would make life too easy for him. Rather, she would punish him by disappearing and framing him for murder.

Nick tells the reader that he cannot deal with angry, tearful women just like his father. My question: why not? His mother was not the angry one in the marriage – it was her husband. Nick claimed that Amy made him a better man because she expected so much from him (intelligence, consideration, romance) but he could not keep it up so he resented her. Nick realized too late that he mistakenly blamed her completely but that he was partly to blame.

A few questions I would pose to Amy and Nick: did he ever see what was happening to Amy as time went on? Did he see what was happening to their relationship? By the end of the novel, it was obvious that Amy and Nick hated each other but I still wondered why they pretended they were different people when they met each other and dated?

Three characters did not seem to fit with the rest of the novel. Why would Amy befriend 2 people at the hotel where she stayed after disappearing, especially since she was carrying around thousands of dollars in cash? It seems out of character for her. Amy’s friend Desi as described seems gay. Maybe he is just more effeminate than what I expect of a guy who would seek out Amy. He does like to control her, though. Maybe I’m not allowing for a different kind of controlling heterosexual guy.

I am accustomed to reading novels which more gradually build-up to a disastrous ending. Initially, the timeline of the novel frustrated me but then I appreciated it as a creative approach to revealing the unspooling of both a marriage and the individuals.

During this Women’s History Month, instead of reviewing women who are already part of the known historical record, I want to focus on a female author who brings unrecognized women to life through her fascinating books of historical fiction: Marie Benedict. I have loved her writing style and choice of women since the first book I read of hers: “The Other Einstein”. I have also thoroughly enjoyed “The Personal Librarian”, “Her Hidden Genius”, “Lady Clementine”, and “The Only Woman in the Room”. To create her mesmerizing stories, Benedict uses original source material and then augments it with reliable secondary material to properly represent the historical background of her characters’ lives.

In these books, Benedict convincingly portrayed real women in science, technology, business, education, and politics, and the men in these fields. The women worked on projects in these fields that positively benefited society in their day, and today. Benedict deftly illustrated the societal forces that the women must have overcome, gone through, or gone under in order to survive and succeed. She also offered examples of possible internal monologues by these women as they struggled to decide how to deal with society’s expectations, and themselves. Yes, Benedict included male characters that trivialized, disrespected, and abused the women but she also showed men who supported, cheered on, and celebrated the women’s advancements and achievements. She did not confine herself to only American women, white women, or women from specific time periods.

In typical fashion when first reading about a woman of whom I have no knowledge, I asked myself “why have I never heard of her?” I learned about only one in school, but not till college: Rosalind Franklin of “Her Hidden Genius”. At that time in the 1980s, Franklin’s contribution in discovering DNA was minimized, with claims that she only took a picture of DNA in 1952 and did not verify what it represented. Years later, in a play at the University of Chicago, I saw her character depicted as refusing to claim her discovery prematurely, without continuous and exhausting proof. Perhaps she really did refuse. In my opinion, that made perfect sense in her time because women, and their work, were routinely dismissed (sometimes still are) unless discovered or verified by men.

Instead of feeling obligated to memorize dry facts about these women, I will more likely remember them through these rich stories. Stories might make it more interesting for children and teenagers to read about these women. Benedict's books can inspire readers to learn more about the real lives of her characters.

I cannot wait to read her latest historical novel “The Mitford Affair”!