Welcome to Episode 131 of the Front Porch Book Club. Linny tells Nancy about her acting audition during her trip to Ireland. She got and has already acted in the gig. The part required her to improv and she decided that she prefers improv, versus scripted, roles. She could not say much about the role, but it is for a television series. Linny says she has two more speaking parts she will perform over the next couple months. Nancy tells Linny that her summer tennis team is headed to Districts in July and that her winter team is headed to Regionals in August! Linny and Nancy both are using the self-talk they learned from Dr. Larry Widman (Episodes 45 & 46).
We have a great, gritty, genre-bending book this month called LADY X by Molly Fader. It’s a brand-new book, just being published on July 14th. In LADY X, the search for a notorious vigilante exposes the secrets among three generations of women, from contemporary L.A. to gritty 1970s New York. In contemporary L.A., Margot Cooper has just learned that her A-list actor husband has sent explicit photos to multiple girls on social media. Margot flees to her childhood home in Pittsburgh, PA with her teenage daughter in tow. In a cardboard box in the corner of the attic, she and her sister find evidence that their mom was somehow a part of the vigilantism of “Lady X.” In 1977 New York City, one of Ginger Daughtry’s two beloved roommates is assaulted. Astounded by the lack of response from police, the young women decide to engage in some light payback, signing their handiwork as “Lady X.” But Lady X becomes a movement that spirals out of control, with more violence under the guise of Lady X. When a body is found fallen—or pushed—from five stories high, the hunt reaches a boiling point. This is another dual-timeline story with lots of characters and a murder mystery, too. It reminded Linny and Nancy a little of THE MIDNIGHT SHOW (Episodes 127 & 128)! Though, LADY X isn’t humorous, like THE MIDNIGHT SHOW. Instead, it is very realistic and gritty.
Nancy says she best enjoyed the story line with Ginger and her roommates in 1977 New York City. She loved the story of these three friends in a city that was pretty dangerous. They encourage one another and start to fight against injustices they experience. Linny also loved the girls’ story line. Linny liked the arc of each of the characters and she finds herself pulling for them. Linny was frustrated by Margot, who was in her 40s, who takes longer to find her own voice. Margot’s sister, Julia, helps her.
Linny mentions that she loves the cover of the book, which Nancy does, too!
Lady X is a fictional vigilante, but Ginger’s story is set during the summer of the real Son of Sam murderer and this serial killer is mentioned throughout her story as part of the danger of the girls’ lives in NYC. Son of Sam was David Berkowicz. Nancy says she didn’t even have to look his name up, she remembered it from the terror of those days. Between 1975 - 1977, he killed six people and wounded 11 others around NYC. He sent mocking letters to the NYPD and reporters. He was arrested in August 1977. He claimed he killed on the orders of a demon who lived in his neighbor, Sam's dog. Linny says she remembers that summer. She likes Son of Sam in this book because it shows how much press he got, while all sorts of crimes against women were not getting any publicity. However, Lady X eventually does get more press as men become outraged by Lady X’s graffiti.
One of the book’s pivotal scenes is a murder during the factual blackout that happened in NYC on August 14, 1977. Linny remembers the blackout and notes is was just one year after the bicentennial after we were all wearing prairie dress wanting to be Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie. A lightning strike disabled the grid and there was a 25-hour blackout during an intense heatwave. There is a lot of fear and grit in Ginger’s life in NYC. It’s a dangerous city at that time. A lot of it comes from predatory men, however. This book is about women finding a way to protest against their abusers, especially when the systems that are supposed to protect them fail.
Nancy asks Linny what she thought about all the feminine rage in this book. Linny struggles with the term “feminine rage.” Linny could understand the powerlessness and fear the roommates felt. In some ways, she was cheering them on. Nancy loved the feminine rage. She liked how they tried to find an outlet for their injustices and how that spurs them to help other women, too. Nancy notes that they are mostly, really, just defending themselves, with the exception of the graffiti, which New York was covered in during the 1970s. Nancy liked how the author demonstrated the imbalance in the justice system and the differential in power. Nancy loved it.
Linny said she was scared for the roommates, at times, and the situations they put themselves in. Linny liked how clear Faye was in setting boundaries for herself and her strength, too. Linny liked her best among the characters in this book. The other roommates grow because of Faye’s steely determination.
Linny notes that there’s also a lot of feminine love in this book. Between friends, moms and daughters, sisters, allies. The book suggests women have to band together because no one else is going to be there for them. Nancy says she think this theme of women banding together is still important today. Nancy loves the demonstration of the love between these friends, but in a realistic manner that showed their disagreements and mistakes, too. Linny also likes the bond and how it comes to fruition at the end of the book, too. Nancy says she cried at the end of the book because of that love and how it is shown at the end of the book.
Nancy notes that near the end of the book, Julia, Margot’s sister, connects Margot: “with friends and colleagues who were investigating stories about women who’d been hurt. Trafficked. Or had broken the glass ceiling in their field. Had won gold medals. Defied the odds. Escaped horrific circumstances. Were changing their communities. Changing the world.”
Linny thought it was beautiful how Julia gives Margot something that helps her find her voice and emerges to help other women. Nancy liked Julia and notes she was very much her mother’s daughter. Linny says Julia was her second favorite character and how she was helping her sister.
Nancy notes that in that same section of the book, we learn Julia is starting a podcast and she’s hired a producer, an engineer, and a research assistant and would be able to launch in several months. Linny and Nancy laugh that they have no staff!
Linny says there are also some women NOT being there for each other in ways they might have been. Noelle, Margot’s assistant, turns out to be duplicitous. Ginger puts her roommate, Faye, in the position to have to compromise herself to get a job at the nightclub where she works. The most disappointing betrayal, to Linny, was the female principal’s non-response to a sexual assault incident involving Margot’s daughter. Linny thought some of these situations were hard to read, but she liked that the author went there.
Nancy read a review of Lady X at PAIGE REVIEWS BOOKS at paigesmith.net (https://paigesmith.net/tag/molly-fader-lady-x/ ) and she thought she captured it well: “Lady X is a heralding beacon in a bleak, dark, inky black night sky. It’s timely in a way that this subject will never not be timely without radical, dramatic, civilization altering change – it’s pointed, it’s aggressive, it’s feral, and yet it’s deeply soft, prodding the softness of your humanity and heart with fingers that gently turn your head and say ‘don’t look away’.”
Linny agrees with the ferality and softness of this story. She says she likes the gray areas in LADY X. She likes how you can see the shadows and understand why people are the way they are. She is looking forward to our next episode, when we’ll welcome Molly Fader to the front porch to talk more about her book, LADY X.
