P.S. to the previous post, concerning radical theater in mid-20th century

 I mentioned Dionysus in '60 in y previous post, and if anyone would like to see a film of their performance (and through that get a clue about what Flashout is all about), the film of the Performance Group in action is available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/dionysus-1970

5 new. novels witth strong female characters

 Two thematically interrelated sets of new novels with impressive female characters feature on the one hand solo women in difficult circumstances and on the other vivid descriptions of female friendships developing in difficult situations.

 The first  set is a pair of works that borrow vividly from the past to give context for the present. Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner is about a freelance American spy who has been tasked with infiltrating a back-to-nature cult in rural France. Flashout by Alexis Soloski is about a college drama teacher who is being threatened by someone from her distant past. Both these novels reflect cultural events from previous decades (Creation Lake is set in the present day but refers frequently to the political and philosophical agitation around May 68 in France, and Flashout, set in the '90s, flashes back to the radical theater, with politically and socially disruptive ideas, of the '60s and '70s. Kushner's spy and the radical circle she enters are constantly referring back to one of the cult's philsophical mentors, a radical thinker with a lot of historical and anthropological concerns. Soloski's acting troupe refers figuratively and literally to troupes like The Performance Group--in particular their groundp-breaking disruptive show/event Dionysus in '69.

 

Kushner's heroine confronts her own past as well, in particular a betrayal concerning a yokung man that she seems to have entrapped into a terrorist plot. For Soloski's heroine, The blackmail in the p;resent day of the novel leads heer heroine to relive the vivid and violent events of her yount which she ran away from college and home with a cult-like theater troupe whose performances disrupt not only theatrical but also social convention, also eventually leading to the heroin's act of betrayal. Both novels are propulsive as well as ensnaring readers in some of the most interesting aspects of the mid-20th century.

 

Three novels that lead female characters into close relationships with other women  include Helpless Women by Rebecca Sharpe (set in rural England for the most part), Eat, Slay, Love by Julie Mae Cohen, set in suburban England, and the Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, set in rural Netherlands. All three take surprising twists, all three put women in difficult and dangerous situations in which they form bonds with each other. In Helpless Women, a con woman and her victim find violence and truth on the run from the law and t heir pasts. In Eat, Pray, Love (which si often quite funny, three victims of a con man make common cause. And in The Safekeep, two women stuck together by family and by the past go through phases of hate, passion, and love (not necessarily in that order), in intense and sometimes highly erotic prose.

All 5 of these books will surprise and reward, each in a different way, and all of them offer vivid portraits of women and women's dilemmas, challenges, and sometimes satisfactions in the present and recent past.