Book Summary and Reviews of The Eights by Joanna Miller

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Bonnie G

Moving and Illuminating
Women know well the uncomfortable experience of being the sole woman in a hostile environment. Women also know well the validating experience of being surrounded by women who lift you up and support you during the good and bad times. Miller has written a universal story centering on four women (the "Eights") who are so bold as to choose to join the inaugural graduating class at Oxford in 1920. The women's varied experiences pre, during and post-WWI are still fresh and underly their determined efforts to become educated and independent women in a society that values neither unless you are a man. Highly recommended to lovers of literary fiction and historical fiction.

Cathryn_Conroy

A Magnificently Written History of the First Women at Oxford, but It's Also a Bit Sluggish and Flat
This is magnificently written and deeply researched historical fiction about the first class of women at England's prestigious Oxford University. But… And this is a big but. It's slow-going. Parts of it are fascinating and sometimes the women's stories rise to almost being a page-turner, but for the most part it's a bit sluggish.

Written by Joanna Miller, this is the story of four very different women who live in Corridor Eight of St. Hugh's College, and they are quickly nicknamed "The Eights." The novel traces their journey at Oxford as they forge a path for women—after 1,000 years of being a male bastion—despite much opposition, ridicule, and uncouth comments from the men at the university. The novel begins in October 1920, soon after the end of the Great War when so many men were killed or maimed that a generation of women would never be able to marry.

The four women who make up The Eights:
• Beatrice Sparks is socially and physically awkward, standing six feet tall and always struggling in clothes that do not fit her large frame. She is the daughter of a militant suffragette, who rarely pays attention to Beatrice except to reprimand her.

• Marianne Grey is the impoverished daughter of a widowed Anglican rector. Her mother died giving birth to her, so sorrow has followed Marianne all her life. She is a scholarship student, studying literature with the hope of teaching someday. Marianne is carrying a tragic secret—one she dare not reveal to even her closest friends. It is so scandalous that if the truth came to light, she would be forced to leave Oxford in disgrace.

• Theodora Greenwood, nicknamed Dora, is perhaps the most beautiful woman on campus, but her heart is filled with grief. She not only lost her favorite brother, George, in the war, but also her fiancé, Charles, whose body is buried in an unmarked grave in France. Her parents allow her to attend Oxford because George cannot. Several months into the academic year, Dora learns a shocking secret that devastates her to her core, threatening everything she holds dear.

• Ottoline Wallace-Kerr, nicknamed Otto, is wealthy, beautiful, fashionably dressed, an absolute flirt, and a mathematical genius. Her mother is so angry she has matriculated at Oxford, eschewing marriage, that she has not spoken to her in a year. Otto flaunts Oxford's quite restrictive rules for women—so much that she is at risk of being sent down (permanently expelled).

The novel focuses on these four women, their abiding friendship, and their arduous days as the first females in what had been for centuries an all-male university, as the unsettled ghosts of the Great War still haunt their lives. The plot is minimal, but the well-developed characters and the historic descriptions of Oxford make up for some of that.

While you'll learn a good bit of history and have a new appreciation for these pioneer scholars, the novel is not a particularly riveting read and even falls flat in places.

Note: Before you even begin reading, bookmark the highly useful glossary at the end of the book. Terms such as chap rules, cuppers, Hilary term, pigeon post, rustication, tute, and many more are defined, and most are critical for understanding the text. (Or you can just Google it term-by-term.)