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feather_ghyllA Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity: Kathleen Gilles Seidel St Martin’s Griffin, 2007
The title comes from ‘Emma’, and in some ways this is a comedy of manners, a different look at school life, friendship, working out what you want and need. The different perspective is because the main character and narrator is Lydia, a mom. That’s her descriptor, and she sets out why that’s different from a mother, which is partly a reaction against her mother and her mother’s generation, but also a class thing. She and her family, husband Jamie, daughter Erin, who is just starting sixth grade (she’s eleven) and the younger son Thomas, live in Washington D.C. and the children go to a nearby private school, that’s really three separate schools. Erin and her classmates are in middle school, not really a thing in the UK.
Lydia was a lawyer, like her husband, changed track after the children were born, then gave up a job she disliked to more or less be a full-time mom, although by now she’s developed a sideline as a children’s photographer. She’s very busy on Alden school’s committees and has three close friends, Mimi, Blair and Annalise, who all have daughters the same age as Erin. The four girls have been friends since starting school. Their moms have a carpool system, and their lives have naturally intertwined for years.
Now that they’re starting sixth grade, Lydia is startled to see that the girls, including her daughter, are ‘the popular girls.’ She – like her friends – never was one of them. She was one of the ‘smart girls’, which is why she left Indiana for a good university where she met her future husband. They have a large house and can afford a private school that used to be a girl’s school for generations. ‘The alumnae’ don’t know what to make of moms like Lydia, with a legal background, a can-do attitude and as much, if not more, money than the old families.
She can’t quite believe that her daughter is one of Those Girls, whose every move is taken by other girls – and, she learns, their moms – as exclusionary. But popularity is a fickle thing as girls’ bodies change and their understanding of the world and their place in it grows. A new girl, Faith, with a divorcing mother who is also an alum, is a change agent. There’s no place for Faith on the soccer team, but she gains a place on the sixth form singing ensemble, which is a bigger deal at the school. At first, this pushes out Rachel, Mimi’s daughter, until Mimi argues for the ensemble’s size to be increased. Erin, who isn’t particularly musical, was never likely to be on the ensemble, but now her three best friends are, as is Faith, and somehow she’s the one who is excluded from the group. Increasingly so.
What the moms all have in common is a fierce desire to do the best for their child, in a particular milieu. Jamie, who has never been so hot on the interpersonal dynamics that Lydia is entangled in (and that I, despite not being a mother got), is even less interested because he has a big case coming up that will take him to Houston. Meanwhile, there’s a new principal, Chris, of whom Lydia approves, who is ruffling up the still existing old ways.
She tries to stop Erin’s social exclusion – not helped by the fact that her daughter is uncommunicative about it, even though she’s clearly hurting. She tries to talk mother-to-mother to Faith’s mother, but finds it tough, as it is to talk to her own friends about the situation, which is affected by their and their daughters’ choices. Suddenly, the support system she took for granted is not there, her husband has different priorities from hers, especially because his demanding case has got national press coverage, while the general school community continues to make demands upon her. And then Erin comes and discloses something that is on a whole other level, changing everything.
It's a compulsive read if not up there with Austen (but who manages that?) Lydia is disarmingly aware of her privilege (some of her traffic problems are caused because she lives quite close to embassies!) She’s also reaching a stage, with Erin on the verge of the menarche and the next stage in her life, where the choices she’s made about her identity, partly because of her girlhood – her relationship with her own mother is not good – are being challenged. Lydia thought that she was comfortable, she’d found her place, her people, and her strengths. But don’t her kids and their happiness come first? Should they come first always? Is she ‘just’ a mom these days? What does that mean for her as part of her generation of women? Is she a good mom? Does she need a new perspective on her marriage? What other obligations does she have?
I have two relatively minor quibbles, one is the choice to describe Erin et al as teenagers when they’re not yet, they’re actually preteens, or strictly speaking, adolescents, even if they’re starting to display some teenage behaviour. I also thought the author lost track of Rachel Gold’s need to be at the centre of things as Faith took over, having decided to become one of the popular girls, and becoming an increasing (and negative) influence on the group. Admittedly, they’re peripheral characters, and Lydia is more interested in their impact on Erin, but it felt as though that was a strand that was dropped.
It's certainly a different take on a school story, concentrating on (over)involved and (over)invested mothers, partly repeating patterns from their youth, while trying to parent and live their lives. Not all of them have given up their jobs. As it was published in 2007, the internet is referenced, the parents have access to e-mail, but social media is not mentioned. One can only imagine how much worse the events in this book would be had it been written nowadays. I’ve read other books by Gilles Seidel, foregrounding women’s experience – her earlier novels tend to be romances, but ‘Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige’ is more in this territory.
My copy had some extras at the end, namely an essay by the author called ‘Isn’t It Time To Stop Blaming The Popular Girls’, based on her own experiences as the mother of two girls, one of whom was one of the popular girls in middle school, a brief interview and questions for book clubs. What’s most interesting is the notes of self-doubt from Gilles Seidel about what went into the book. I can see her retrospective point that she should have made some of Erin’s friends the second born child, because girls who have watched an older sibling, particularly a sister, navigate middle school for a year or two have an advantage in knowing what’s cool or not, especially when it comes to clothes.
The title comes from ‘Emma’, and in some ways this is a comedy of manners, a different look at school life, friendship, working out what you want and need. The different perspective is because the main character and narrator is Lydia, a mom. That’s her descriptor, and she sets out why that’s different from a mother, which is partly a reaction against her mother and her mother’s generation, but also a class thing. She and her family, husband Jamie, daughter Erin, who is just starting sixth grade (she’s eleven) and the younger son Thomas, live in Washington D.C. and the children go to a nearby private school, that’s really three separate schools. Erin and her classmates are in middle school, not really a thing in the UK.
Lydia was a lawyer, like her husband, changed track after the children were born, then gave up a job she disliked to more or less be a full-time mom, although by now she’s developed a sideline as a children’s photographer. She’s very busy on Alden school’s committees and has three close friends, Mimi, Blair and Annalise, who all have daughters the same age as Erin. The four girls have been friends since starting school. Their moms have a carpool system, and their lives have naturally intertwined for years.
Now that they’re starting sixth grade, Lydia is startled to see that the girls, including her daughter, are ‘the popular girls.’ She – like her friends – never was one of them. She was one of the ‘smart girls’, which is why she left Indiana for a good university where she met her future husband. They have a large house and can afford a private school that used to be a girl’s school for generations. ‘The alumnae’ don’t know what to make of moms like Lydia, with a legal background, a can-do attitude and as much, if not more, money than the old families.
She can’t quite believe that her daughter is one of Those Girls, whose every move is taken by other girls – and, she learns, their moms – as exclusionary. But popularity is a fickle thing as girls’ bodies change and their understanding of the world and their place in it grows. A new girl, Faith, with a divorcing mother who is also an alum, is a change agent. There’s no place for Faith on the soccer team, but she gains a place on the sixth form singing ensemble, which is a bigger deal at the school. At first, this pushes out Rachel, Mimi’s daughter, until Mimi argues for the ensemble’s size to be increased. Erin, who isn’t particularly musical, was never likely to be on the ensemble, but now her three best friends are, as is Faith, and somehow she’s the one who is excluded from the group. Increasingly so.
What the moms all have in common is a fierce desire to do the best for their child, in a particular milieu. Jamie, who has never been so hot on the interpersonal dynamics that Lydia is entangled in (and that I, despite not being a mother got), is even less interested because he has a big case coming up that will take him to Houston. Meanwhile, there’s a new principal, Chris, of whom Lydia approves, who is ruffling up the still existing old ways.
She tries to stop Erin’s social exclusion – not helped by the fact that her daughter is uncommunicative about it, even though she’s clearly hurting. She tries to talk mother-to-mother to Faith’s mother, but finds it tough, as it is to talk to her own friends about the situation, which is affected by their and their daughters’ choices. Suddenly, the support system she took for granted is not there, her husband has different priorities from hers, especially because his demanding case has got national press coverage, while the general school community continues to make demands upon her. And then Erin comes and discloses something that is on a whole other level, changing everything.
It's a compulsive read if not up there with Austen (but who manages that?) Lydia is disarmingly aware of her privilege (some of her traffic problems are caused because she lives quite close to embassies!) She’s also reaching a stage, with Erin on the verge of the menarche and the next stage in her life, where the choices she’s made about her identity, partly because of her girlhood – her relationship with her own mother is not good – are being challenged. Lydia thought that she was comfortable, she’d found her place, her people, and her strengths. But don’t her kids and their happiness come first? Should they come first always? Is she ‘just’ a mom these days? What does that mean for her as part of her generation of women? Is she a good mom? Does she need a new perspective on her marriage? What other obligations does she have?
I have two relatively minor quibbles, one is the choice to describe Erin et al as teenagers when they’re not yet, they’re actually preteens, or strictly speaking, adolescents, even if they’re starting to display some teenage behaviour. I also thought the author lost track of Rachel Gold’s need to be at the centre of things as Faith took over, having decided to become one of the popular girls, and becoming an increasing (and negative) influence on the group. Admittedly, they’re peripheral characters, and Lydia is more interested in their impact on Erin, but it felt as though that was a strand that was dropped.
It's certainly a different take on a school story, concentrating on (over)involved and (over)invested mothers, partly repeating patterns from their youth, while trying to parent and live their lives. Not all of them have given up their jobs. As it was published in 2007, the internet is referenced, the parents have access to e-mail, but social media is not mentioned. One can only imagine how much worse the events in this book would be had it been written nowadays. I’ve read other books by Gilles Seidel, foregrounding women’s experience – her earlier novels tend to be romances, but ‘Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige’ is more in this territory.
My copy had some extras at the end, namely an essay by the author called ‘Isn’t It Time To Stop Blaming The Popular Girls’, based on her own experiences as the mother of two girls, one of whom was one of the popular girls in middle school, a brief interview and questions for book clubs. What’s most interesting is the notes of self-doubt from Gilles Seidel about what went into the book. I can see her retrospective point that she should have made some of Erin’s friends the second born child, because girls who have watched an older sibling, particularly a sister, navigate middle school for a year or two have an advantage in knowing what’s cool or not, especially when it comes to clothes.
