Review by Booklist Review
The Great War has decimated a generation of young men and left no one unscathed, including the "million women too many" who are facing an uncertain future. In her first novel, Miller imagines the experiences of four fictional women matriculating at Oxford University as part of the first official class of female undergraduates. Dora seeks a fresh start after losing her brother and her fiancé in battle, while socialite Otto wants to make up for time lost during her wartime volunteer service. Beatrice, the daughter of a famous suffragette, hopes to make some real friends outside her mother's shadow, while Marianne is fearful of revealing a potentially harmful secret. Assigned to adjoining rooms on Corridor 8 and subsequently known as the Eights, the four women bond over restrictive rules and overt misogyny. An Oxford graduate herself, Miller describes campus life in vivid detail, and her protagonists are complex, with hidden motivations and insecurities that are gradually revealed as their friendships develop. This pairs well Helen Simonson's The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club (2024) and Kate Quinn's The Briar Club (2024).
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Miller's engrossing debut follows the first women undergraduates eligible to earn degrees at Oxford University. The four students, housed together in Corridor Eight at St. Hugh's College in 1920, take to calling themselves the Eights. They're unlikely allies, a novelistic trope that Miller transcends through insightful and surprising characterizations. Socialite Ottoline "Otto" Wallace-Kerr masks her mathematical gifts under a flapper persona and fights her mother's insistence that she marry. In contrast to Otto's self-possession, six-foot-tall Beatrice Sparks feels insecure about her height and her attraction to women, and she struggles to find herself in the shadow of her famous suffragette mother. Marianne Grey, a scholarship student whose funding is contingent on maintaining excellent grades, makes frequent visits to her widowed father at the expense of her studies. Lastly, there's Dora Greenwood, whose brother and fiancé were both killed in WWI. The women bond as they struggle with their demanding coursework and the school's pervasive misogyny, which Marianne compares to mice under floorboards, "scuttling about unseen but never far away." Their mutual trust is tested after secrets are revealed, first about Dora's fiancé and then about the real reason for Marianne's trips home. Miller supplements her nuanced group portrait with bracing depictions of lingering WWI trauma. It's a memorable tale of a fast-changing world. Agent: Marina de Passe, Soho Agency. (Apr.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT Miller's first novel sketches a point in history when the world was shaking off war and attempting to move to brighter futures. In 1920, Oxford at last admits women students, but the first women entrants are belittled and preyed on by the male students, while professors take any chance to remove them from their classes. The novel focuses on four of these women, living together in the Corridor 8 rooms. Beatrice hopes to move out of her famous suffragist mother's shadow; socialite Otto tries to forget war horrors she witnessed; Marianne hides the true reason she left her village; and beautiful Dora would have married, if only her fiancé had not gone to war. The women have more in common than they realize as they navigate Oxford and a precarious postwar world. The novel begins when the women meet in 1920, but Miller also explicates their experiences before Oxford and how the war affected them. Readers will root for the well-written characters and share in their trials. VERDICT Recommended for readers who enjoy historical fiction as well as women's fiction.--Jen Funk
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