Powerfully, intensely, passionately, Barbara Raskin's Hot Flashes speaks to a generation of women as none has ever before. Already hailed as a brilliant novel about love, relationships and where women are today, Hot Flashes may be the most heatedly discussed novel of the year.
Hot Flashes hums with tension; it ignites, enflames, and captures a unique era through its protrayal of four unforgettable women: Sukie, Joanne, Elaine, Diana. Their dreams were a mirror of an America in transition, reflecting a turbulent time. Born with FDR was president, teenagers in the fifties when sex was a sin, young wmoen in the turbulent '60s, they now have children as old as they were when JFK was shot, Vietnam began and the Movements and Liberation swept them into a new age. And their lives are changing yet again.
couldn't get through the first chapter.
âA generation must tacitly agree to remember certain things in certain ways and refuse to be dissuaded from its chosen version of the past. Otherwise, the past won't stay put. If we're not vigilant about preserving our own history, someone will always come along and try to correct our memories. And then how will we know who we were or who we are now?â
So Barbara Raskin begins âHot Flashesâ, a book by turns funny, vulgar, perceptive , outrageous â" and brutally honest in every line. The novel tells of group of women who came to adulthood after WWII â" the âDepression Era Babiesâ -- and lived through the challenging decades of the conformist fifties and strife-ridden sixties, coming together in 1985 when one of their friends dies unexpectedly. As they face their own mortality, look back over their lives, and come to terms with the future, they learn as much about themselves as they do about their friend's life.
It's not often a book literally brings me to tears, but the final scene of this one did just that.
The death of a friend brings together friends. Hot women who married in the 50's, protested in the 60's, slept around in the 70's, and come together to reminisce.
Flashy and wonderful!...Plenty of flashes here-of wit,humor,insight,anger. It builds a conclusion that is powerful, moving and hopeful
