Review: The Invisible Women’s Club

The Invisible Women’s Club by Helen Paris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Janet Pimm is 72 years old. Single ever since she caught her husband cheating on her. Lost touch with all her old friends from university. Lost touch with her friends from GCHQ after a male superior humiliated her and had her sacked. Now her only solace is her allotment in the British seaside town of Hastings where she grows medicinal herbs. As should be expected of someone who worked at GCHQ, Janet is incredibly intelligent, and scarily knowledgeable about plants, unfortunately she seems to have lost all her social skills and has alienated most of the other people on the allotments through her high-handed behaviour. Her life is highly regimented, and her confidence in her own abilities is sky high.

Janet also has an annoying neighbour, Bev, who is constantly 'popping' round, suggesting they go to local am-dram shows and the like, clearly thinking Janet is in her dotage.

Then one day disaster strikes, the local council announce that Japanese Knotweed has been found in the wild flower meadow beside the allotments and the allotments will have to be closed. Desperate to save her allotment, Janet puts her formidable intellect to work and finds an unlikely co-conspirator in Bev next door. A trip to visit Janet's old GCHQ colleague in the Lake District gives the women a chance to discover more about each other as Bev and Janet agree they refuse to be invisible women over forty any more.

At first I found this difficult to get into, Janet's internal monologue was very self-important and full of Latin names for plants. When she applied for a voluntary position with the National Trust my heart sank, she'd be the sort of person who imparted dry facts one after the other, and only things she deemed to be important (ie nothing funny). However, the book soon had me in its grip and I defy anyone not to enjoy Bev, Janet, and the chair of the allotments chaining themselves together to defy the bulldozers!

A story about the power of the people, a shout out for the menopausal and the retired, a reminder of the ways in which those in power abuse that power, a love letter to plants and nature. A book about reclaiming your voice and following your heart.

I thoroughly enjoyed this.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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