Revolutionary

I have been participating in two book clubs for about a year now. The first book club was started by an old friend from high school and our general theme is books that are made into movies, the idea being that we'll read a book and then go together to watch the movie and afterwards have dinner and discuss. I'll be honest with you, its more of an excuse for the girls to get out and not so much of a book club.

My second book club however is legit. It was started my Mini Me's best friend's mom, who is also a good friend of mine. She is a midwife and so the book club is mom's who love to read. We can bring our kids and they can play while we talk about our books. We have a general theme of historical fiction.

Before I go into my review let me tell you my general GoodReads star rating system so you have an idea of how I rate books.

1 star - I didn't like the book - I found the subject matter to be flat and uninteresting and the writing style just didn't do anything for me (I give very few books this kind of rating because I generally like to be encouraging to writers since I am a fledgling one myself)

2 stars - The book was okay - I didn't like but I didn't hate it either. Sometimes this comes if the subject matter wasn't of interest or if the plot was interesting but the execution was lacking. 

3 stars - I liked it - The plot was pretty good, the writing was pretty good. Generally I'd classify it as a good book (The majority of books I read get this rating)

4 stars - Really liked it - I found the plot engaging and thought provoking, the writing was spot on and did a good job getting the message across. This is a book I would read again and would definitely recommend to friends.

5 stars- Loved it, need to own it - Very few books make it into this category but the books that fall into here are ones that really spoke to me, really got my mind going and I would read over and over again. Usually books that fall into this category I want to own my own copy of and would highly recommend to friends.

This month's book was Revolutionary by Alex Meyers. I gave it a 2 out of 5 starts rating. I will warn you now that this review may have some spoilers in it so if you don't want to know anymore about the book then stop reading now. Revolutionary tells the story of Deborah Samson, a woman living during the period of the Revolutionary War who struggles with the lines drawn in the sand depicting the role of gender in daily life. Deborah does not like the restrictions of being female in the late 1700s and decides to dress like a man and enlist to serve as a soldier in the Continental Army during the war, under the name of Robert Shurtliff.

As the book begins, we get the sense that Deborah is a woman who is really just dissatisfied with the lack of freedoms a woman was afforded during that time period. She wants more for her life than what was traditionally offered to a woman then, which was basically to become a wife and raise children and keep a home. They had little rights and were in essence the servants of their husbands. When Deborah puts on the mask of Robert and enters the army she is given a glimpse at the freedoms and the differences between men and women. 

But something happens within the book that for me led to some awkwardness and muddled the direction of the plot for me. In about the middle of the book it almost seems as if Deborah begins to question her gender identity bringing into mind transgender issues that we see and hear about today. However, this question does not seem to be developed enough for me to find it an interesting and compelling plot point as Deborah seems to slip back into being female again. It was this slight touching on the subject but not really delving into it that made me confused. I think the overall plot would have been far more successful had the story gone one way or the other; either this is the story of a transgender person struggling to fit into the gender constraints within their society, or it is the story of a woman dressing as a man to acquire more freedom for herself. Personally, I would have found the plot very compelling if Alex Meyers had taken the transgender approach and explored that individuals battles in a time period very different from our own.

The gender plot confusion aside, the rest of the book was a little blah. There were a few good scenes with fighting but not much happened. In fact, it almost felt as if Deborah's ruse was too easy. It was based on a real woman who did such a thing but I still felt as if it was a little unbelievable. I kept waiting for some conflict to happen, someone to find her out and for her to be held accountable for her actions, but nothing like that happened. I found the ending to be rather disappointing and inconsistent with the character of Deborah. But perhaps that is more of disappointment with the gender roles of women in general during that time period.