I enjoyed this book about the friendship that grows between four smart, strong women, who are assigned to lived together in their first year of Oxford in 1920. Theirs will be the first matriculating class of women at this esteemed institution, and they bond as they meet the challenges of a sad, post WWI world, as well as battle misogyny and patriarchy.

“Women are mocked for being too dowdy or too attractive, too feeble-minded or too diligent. They are criticized for breaking rules, for slavishly adhering to rules, for using the university’s resources lavishly, for operating on a shoestring. The truth of the matter is with some men they can never win.”

“Why does she like the number eight? Because it’s an even number, a cube, and a Fibonacci number. Because it has the most recognizable Greek root in English that gives rise to splendid words like octopus and octave. It is the number of squares on one side of the chessboard, the periodic number of oxygen, the indicator of a gale on the Beaufort scale, the number of furlongs in a mile. It is the most interesting shape of any of the digits with its infinite symetry. It’s an egg timer, a snowman, a knot, a belt buckle. And she was born on the eighth day of the eighth month…”

As the story unfolds, we get backstory on each of these women, coming to understand what they’ve had to surmount to be there. I enjoyed spending time with them, rooting for them, and eventually cheering for them.

You may enjoy The Eights too. I give it four stars.