Alice adams is supposed to be a good writer. this book is 400 pages. 400 pages of fiction is rarely good. it was absolutely awful. a lot of characters that were not interesting so hard to remember. Megan was the only interesting one.. it took me forever to read. ( )

This book I liked better than Caroline's Daughter's, and even though I read the whole thing, I still wasn't horribly crazy about it. It's not one I think I would read again. It reminded me very much of Valley of the Dolls and just the sheer stupidity of some people! But I liked the characters of Megan and Peg and Jane. But it seemed like all any of the characters did was screw around and then got pissed when their spouse/lover did the same thing! ( )

"Superior Women" is about five girls who meet at Radcliffe in 1943; their freshman year of college. Varying backgrounds and different personalities should make for an interesting narrative which follows them beyond their school years through most of their adult life. Unfortunately there is nothing exceptional about the characters or the plot. Many of the characters were one-dimensional and much of the plot was contrived with too many coincidental events - like two of the women who traveled in totally different circles falling in love with the same man. And one of the women, in a critical scene when she needs someone to fall into bed with, just happens to run into an old flame (a second rate musician from New York) singing in a bar in Hawaii.

And it’s a mystery to me why the book was titled "Superior Women". Doesn’t that mean first-class, unrivaled, or supreme.... at least in some way? None of these women even came close to living a normal well-balanced healthy life style. They ended up in dysfunctional marriages (one by choice - for the financial/social gain), having multiple affairs, neglecting their children which left them with mental scars into adulthood, had jobs they hated, found it difficult to make commitments, were hypocritical, had low self-esteem or the extreme opposite - had destructive self centered attitudes. Superior? You’ve got to be kidding me! Perhaps Alice Adams was simply referring to all women in general of that generation being superior merely because they managed to survive the obstacles of life generally dominated by powerful authoritative men.... because all men are the enemy in this world created by Alice Adams.

This 1980’s vintage chick-lit novel presents life from a woman’s point of view. An interesting contrast is Anton Myrer’s "The Last Convertible" which depicts life during the same years for several male friends that met at college, all from a male’s point of view. "The Last Convertible" is by far “superior” to "Superior Women". However if you like reading books about women being victimized and abused, being degraded by vile mouthed bigoted liberal men, or bored to death by conservative chauvinistic men "Superior Women" is the book for you. ( )

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