Girls night out. Way, way out.

Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan...

is about a society of high school girls sworn to love and protect each other. It's little more than a sorority of chatty, stuck-up do-gooders, until (a) they elect three new members and (b) they acquire a new faculty advisor with a troublesome past.  We soon find out that the three new members have some serious self esteem issues and that the new advisor has some issues of her own.  Least of which is her dissatisfaction with the status quo--boys go to college or get jobs; girls learn to keep house and make themselves pretty for boys.

Wow.  I'm not saying Daughters of Eve is a "great" book or anything, but it sure is a daring book.  It presents the worst excesses of '70s male dominance in a way that makes your skin crawl.  Men suck!  At least they used to suck...but do they still?  Maybe they do!  All men always suck!  Then it takes the female reaction to an extreme verging onto sickness...maybe even tipping over into madness.  You don't know whether to scream, "Yeah!  He deserved it!" or whimper, "...but at the cost!"

Ms. Duncan drew stereotypes into people you know by heart.  The angry husband.  The sacrificing wife.  The child witness of a decade of abuse.  The ambitious girl who is so doubtful of her abilities that she self-sabotages her scholarship.  The artist who wants to be a mother, too.  The teenage boy who just wants to love and be loved but can't--it's not 'cool' enough.  The psychic--

Okay, maybe just one of the ten Daughters of Eve isn't as well-drawn as the others.  She's the token psychic.

Highly recommended for girls of all ages.  It's a time--it's not our time, but it may have been our mothers'.