http://www.susanhatedliterature.net/2019/06/things-a-bright-girl-can-do/ ( )

I really enjoyed this - feminism plus lgbt rep is a match made in heaven! ( )

“doing the right thing was a lot more complicated than she thought it was, and she wasn’t at all sure that she liked it.”

Nicholls has written a decent piece of historical fiction to familiarize a young adult audience with the suffragette movement and the experiences of women during World War I. She’s clearly done her research, and it sometimes shows a little too much. (The reader is quickly made aware of the distinction between the milder suffragists, led by Millicent Fawcett, and the militant suffragettes, led by Sylvia Pankhurst. In the course of the book, many other unions and pacifist organizations run by ardent, committed women are introduced. “Actions”, demonstrations, and hunger strikes are also described.) Even though these historical details aren’t always as seamlessly integrated into the narrative as they might be, Things a Bright Girl Can Do still makes for more entertaining reading than the sometimes dry nonfiction texts available on the subject.

Nicholls’s novel, set in London, covers a four-year period—from February, 1914 to February, 1918 (when “The Representation of The People Act”, which gave voting rights to a limited group of women, was passed by British parliament). The book presents the experiences of three young women of different classes and dispositions. The three become involved in the suffrage movement for different reasons. One, Evelyn Collis, is seventeen and from a solidly middle-class background. Expected to marry her childhood friend (Teddy), become a mother, and keep house, Evelyn is a clever and idealistic girl who wants to attend Oxford (like her brother) and to live a life of purpose. A second girl, Nell, is a cross-dressing, fifteen-year-old, factory girl from a large, noisy family. Her family’s poverty and her own employment in a sweatshop at half a man’s pay, as well as a naturally pugnacious temperament, drive her to attend suffrage meetings. She falls in love with May Thornton, another fifteen-year-old, the free-spirited, progressive daughter of a widowed mother who is a vegetarian, socialist, pacifist, Quaker, suffragist, and a few other things besides. (I can’t say I found Nell and May’s relationship very convincingly portrayed. Too much modern frankness and tolerance about sexual matters seeps into the narrative about the love affair.)

The chapters are short, shifting from one character to another with relative ease. Narration is omniscient. Although this is a big book (over 400 pages), it reads quickly—increasingly so as the war progresses and the girls mature. The writing is competent, and there’s an effort to incorporate some of the idiomatic speech of the day. (Having said that, I’ll admit that I burned out on the overuse of “frightfully” and “old man”, occasionally feeling as though I’d passed through some portal into a P. G. Wodehouse novel). Characterization is not a strength. I wasn’t as engaged by the stories of the three girls as I thought I’d be, though Evelyn’s situation became more absorbing as the war added complications to her relationship with Teddy. I particularly dreaded Nell’s scenes; she never quite made it beyond caricature. In a more capable writer’s hands, her story might have stolen the show. I was mostly just indifferent to May. It’s possible that in attempting to tell the stories of three girls, Nicholls diluted the potential emotional power of the novel.

Evelyn’s story is based in part on Vera Britain’s Testament of Youth, which is a more moving work by far than Nicholls’s novel. Nell’s sections are apparently derived from Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, and May’s narrative is informed by Ann Wiltsher’s Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War. While I was somewhat disappointed by the novel, I’ll allow that it succeeds in giving girls today an idea of women’s lot during World War, as well as a sense of what it may have been part of the fight for a more independent, free, and stimulating life. ( )

This book follows the stories of three girls during the period 2014 - 2018. All three are involved in the suffrage movement whilst feeling the effects of the war to a greater or lesser extent. Evelyn is from the upper middle class and rebels against her family's expectation that she should get married to her good friend, Teddy. What Evelyn wants is to go to university. May is middle class, a Quaker and the daughter of a political activist. She is also a sapphist (lesbian) and this is unquestioningly accepted by her mother and other members of the circles she moves in. Nell is working class. She dresses like a boy and it seems possible that she is trans. May and Nell meet at a suffrage meeting and are drawn to each other. They become lovers and the tension between their different beliefs and expectations becomes a major factor in their plot lines.
The use of three such different characters allows Sally Nichols to present a variety of points of view on women's suffrage and the war. Although all three of the girls are part of the suffrage movement, their motivations and involvement are different and the focus is on their personal experiences rather than the ins and outs of what happened. Evelyn, May and Nell are all well-drawn, fully-rounded characters - at times they are admirable but other times you feel like shaking them. Although there are three girls there are only two storylines since May and Nell meet up very early in the book. I kept waiting for the two threads to come together but they never did and this spoiled the book for me a little. This is a good book for thoughtful teens with an interest in history and/or feminism. ( )