Download a FREE copy of “The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke” on Amazon from December 6-10, 2013!

Dec. 5, 2013 - PRLog -- The book takes us on a journey of discovery during July and August of 1963 in a Boston biology lab as 19-year-old Bronwen navigates a summer internship, and struggles to prove herself in the emerging field of viral genetics after a telegram relaying a terrible family tragedy threatens to derail her dream of becoming a scientist.

(Currently in development as an independent feature film.)

Reviews:
“Barbara Riddle has given us a sharp, funny glimpse into a little explored moment in women’s recent history.  The year is 1963, the same year Betty Friedan published ‘The Feminine Mystique.’  Brave young women were heading out from college and looking for lives very different from those their mothers had lived.

My excitement about ‘The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke’ stems in part from the fact that I was there- heading for graduate school in science in 1963.  I recognized Riddle’s heroine Bronwen for her spirit of adventure as well as her sometimes crippling self-doubts (carefully nourished by the all-too-realistic boyfriend-from-hell). Today’s 20-somethings will recognize her as a woman struggling, like themselves, for personal coherence in a world that still has difficulty seeing us as complete and entire human beings.”
- Barbara Ehrenreich, Author

Download your FREE copy of The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke, a novel, by author Barbara Riddle on Amazon from December 6-10, 2013 by visiting http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BP01WWE.

More Reviews:
“This slim little novel is a coming of age story set in the Sixties. It initially caught my fancy because Rilke is one of my favorite poets. I found the book charming. Bronwen, an undergraduate in a Portland, Oregon, college, flies to Boston for a summer internship in a molecular biology laboratory in Waltham. She will also spend the summer with her boyfriend, Eric, who graduated the previous year in Portland and is now a graduate student in the same field at Harvard.

... Felix is Bronwen’s supervisor, and after a somewhat intimidating first day, Bronwen settles into the routine of the lab and earns Felix’s respect for her skill and devotion. But all is not well between Bronwen and Eric. From the first meeting, it’s obvious that he’s very smart, narcissistic and only cares about Bronwen when they are in bed. One of the features of the story that I really liked was the fact that most of the characters are aspiring scientists, and only one, Felix’s wife, has a PhD.

Because this is the Sixties, women are just beginning to appear in graduate departments in the sciences, and gender discrimination at all levels and in all forms is rampant. As the story unfolds, we watch Bronwen bond intellectually with Felix while struggling to maintain the fiction that Eric loves her as much as she loves him, and possibly somewhat near as much as he loves himself. Felix turns out to be typical of the ABD (all but degree) graduate student struggling to finish his dissertation so he and his wife can move on with their lives. But his love of laboratory work and his devotion to research are perfectly in synch with Bronwen’s...

... No earth-shaking scientific breakthroughs, and no overcharged romances, just a story about a young woman who gets firmly hooked on science and learns how to contribute to it, beautifully told in spare prose that evokes the stresses and desires that science imposes on its followers and the special burdens it inflicts on women who choose to join the ranks, especially fifty years ago.

... I was struck with just how few words it takes Riddle to capture a moment, evoke a feeling or describe a lab procedure. There’s an especially striking passage where she manages to explain in half a page the logic of Bronwen’s idea for an original procedure. What follows is one of the best moments of the book as she carries her innovation to completion while distractions cascade past her in the lab. This book with its whimsical title deserves its place on the LabLit List (www.lablit.com). Although it focuses on the early formative years, it elegantly describes what motivates most scientists.
-Kirk Smith, (http://www.fictionaboutscience.com)

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About the Author

Barbara Riddle, is a native New Yorker who was educated at Reed College and Brandeis University (Ph.D., biochemistry, 1970).  Although she has lived in Portland, Boston, London, San Francisco and Prague, she now divides her time between New York City and St. Petersburg, Florida. She’s at work on a second novel and also a memoir of her bohemian girlhood in Greenwich Village in the 1950’s. Her short nonfiction, fiction and poetry have been published in London and America.  She is passionate about telling the stories of complicated women. She blogs at http://www.poodlesontheroof.blogspot.com. Website: www.girlpretending.com

Among her favorite writers are Katherine Mansfield, Emily Dickinson, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Anton Chekhov, Frank Conroy, Leo Tolstoy, Amy Hempel, Alice Munro and Nadine Gordimer.  And, of course, Rainer Maria Rilke.

Available for interview. Contact: barbdvorak@earthlink.net, or 917 279-5890

Key Words: Coming-of-age, Bildungsroman, 1960s, women in science, genetics, DNA, James D. Watson, fiction about science, molecular biology, female scientists, 1950s, graduate student, internship, summer internship, Harvard, Cambridge, glass ceilings, STEM, gender issues