A Story of Love, Fear, and Misogyny
Dive into second-wave feminism, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, gurus, hippies, Mafiosi, the Pill, the Beatles, class distinctions, astrology, but most of all, the eternal mystery of what's going on between men and women.
Ann Medlock's roman á clef follows Lee Palmer, a smart woman swimming solo against the powerful tides of the Mad Men era—a time not designed for a divorced mom working “outside the home.” Beset by nightmares of homelessness, Lee welcomes the safety of having a knight protector, the brilliant, charming Joe Montagna, who becomes the greatest danger she’s ever faced.
Silence of the Seamaid will piss you off and break your heart—it will also make you laugh out loud. And maybe even cheer.
In this intimate, revelatory novel, Medlock (Outing the Mermaid) charts the awakening of a woman of promise and ambition who continually discovers that, in mid-century America, even the men who share her political values would prefer she perform the role of “Mrs. Montagna.” After a few years as “a template bride, young helpmeet, then a new mom,” Lee Palmer dares to divorce her husband, becoming a single mother in the mid 1960s and making her living as the “girl assistant” to a boss in charge of generating position papers for Democrats. After an unceremonious firing, she secures a shot at her dream job, writing at the White House, trying to imbue Lyndon Johnson with “Kennedy-style class.” But her promising new romance with Joe Montagna—a hard-charging charmer certain to be “Secretary of Labor someday”—quickly swamps out her plans.Joe proposes, and he has their lives all laid out: a new home in New York City, to go with his new consulting business, and the new boat he bought for the honeymoon, without checking in with Lee, who has recurring nightmares of shipwrecks. An ill-wind blows soon after she accepts, and Medlock’s vibrantly detailed novel surges into a tumultuous age and milieu, its world of marches, movement politics, Play it as it Lays, Italian weddings, and audiences with the Maharishi, all captured with a verisimilitude that’s both dishy and nerve-wracking. (One sharp invention: a dopey hippie musical called Boobs, the “defining theatre work of their era.”)
What’s most wrenching, though, is the man Joe reveals himself to be, angry and fragile as his ceramic bulldogs. Lee’s eventual efforts at making a mistake, like the rest of the narrative, ride her zeitgeist, as she finds strength and support as “the rise of feminism was changing so many rules, confusing so many people.” The richness of characterization and cultural reporting comes at the expense of narrative momentum, and the length is epic. But it’s urgent and alive, studded with insights and a relentless succession of striking scenes.
Takeaway: This marvelously written epic lays bare a woman’s awakening at the dawn of second wave feminism.
Great for fans of: Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, Dorothy Bryant’s Ella Price’s Journal.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A
"Silence of the Seamad is Jane Austen with sex."
