A Cowardly Woman No More: A Novel by Ellen Cooney

I utterly love, love, love this book. I never knew about or read any of Ellen Cooney’s fiction before, but I am a fan now. And to think, I only found this novel by mere chance. I happened to visit a branch of my local library system that I used to go to quite a bit, but hadn’t for awhile, and I happened to walk past the new arrivals shelf. The title, so striking, so challenging immediately appealed to me. I picked it up, felt its heft in my hand (slim novel as it is) and decided it was coming home with me.

I read it in a day and half. I couldn’t tear myself away. I felt so connected to this woman, felt her latent simmering dissatisfaction so keenly, I had to keep reading.

The novel revolves around a woman who leads an ordinary life, as most of us do: she works for a local company, a office job, and she’s married with kids. She’s hitting her middle years. She’s good at what she does professionally. She is encouraged to and does apply for a promotion. She doesn’t get it, which would be devastating enough — but the kick in the head is that the job goes to a man who is clearly under-qualified for it. It all comes to a head at the company’s annual banquet, held at a famous, local restaurant.

The woman walks in one way, walks out another.

That’s all I’ll say. You have to read this book.

Cooney’s words are knives and silk ribbons. Perhaps they are silk ribbons with edges as sharp as knives; they slice and soothe all at the same time. Women of this age — or, really, of any age once they’ve had a taste of the patriarchal world in which we all must live — will find this novel tragically relatable. It is so nice to hear a chorus of voices bounce back to us, to know what sounds like an echo is not merely our own voice, but the sound of many others screaming same complaints, announcing the same snubs and hurts and disrespects that have been inflicted on ourselves. The isolation Trisha Donahue, the novel’s protagonist, lives is a dark we all know. Cooney shows us that though we may not see each other, she does.