BOOKS IN BRIEF

The Death of Feminism by Phyllis Chesler (Palgrave Macmillan, 256 pp., $24.95). Maureen Dowd's recent piece in the New York Times heralds feminism's retreat in the face of modern sexual politics. Dowd bemoans the return of quaint pre-feminist rituals such as letting men pay for dinner, women taking their husband's last name, and playing hard-to-get while romping around the dating scene. This, according to a defeated Dowd, is the death of feminism.

Those feeling sorry for Dowd and her perishing feminist philosophy should grab a copy of Phyllis Chesler's new book. Chesler doesn't read feminism its last rites because successful women can't seem to find a date, nor does she waste time lamenting the latest trend in Cosmo covers. Rather, it is precisely Dowd's kind of insipid commentary on modern feminism that causes a legitimate feminist like Phyllis Chesler to sound the movement's death knell. To her, Dowd's commentary on contemporary feminism is akin to Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

In The Death of Feminism, Chesler, a long-time feminist with impeccable credentials, indicts the feminist establishment for swapping its soul for a cushy spot in the far left wing of the Democratic party. This backroom political alliance comes at the expense of abandoning women the world over--especially those currently subjected to the horrors of Islamofacism and Islamic gender apartheid.

Chesler takes great personal and professional risk to expose how blind partisanship has corrupted the feminist movement to the point of ignoring the plight of women in the Middle East. Under the guise of tolerance for cultural custom, gruesome accounts of woman being hanged, raped, enslaved, stoned to death, and otherwise degraded in the name of Islam are receiving nothing more than a collective "not my problem" from rank-and-file feminists. Chesler answers this obdurate disregard with a rallying cry:

Western feminists cannot turn their backs on the plight of [Islamic] women. Our vision of freedom for women must become part of American foreign policy. We must work with our government and with our international allies on this, because it is one of the most important feminist priorities of the twenty-first century.

Chesler's views were not cultivated within a Western vacuum. In the most compelling section of the book, she describes her time in Afghanistan as a young bride to an Afghan-born Muslim educated in the United States. Her newlywed adventure to Afghanistan quickly degenerates into captivity as her husband, spurred by his traditional Afghan family, regresses into fits of misogyny and dominance so malignant that his young wife is forced to flee the country, gravely ill and concealing a pregnancy that would prevent her leaving, thereby signing her death warrant.

The Death of Feminism is a clarion call to those feminists who believe George W. Bush is a greater threat to women than Islamic fundamentalism. It also shames (or would, had they any sense of shame) women like Maureen Dowd, who think feminism's successes and failures hinge on whether American women prefer to be addressed as Mrs. or Ms. Such nonsense should no longer occupy the minds of serious feminists. It is the brave but ravaged women of the Islamic world to whom they should now turn their attention, their energies, and their anger.

--Sarah Longwell

We're in Trouble: Stories by Christopher Coake (Harcourt, 320 pp., $23). The heartpounding jubilation of true love and the dark despair that comes with death represent the two poles of human emotion. The strength of these emotions, indeed, has made their interplay a fruitful subject for English-language authors since the time of Chaucer and Langland.

In his new collection of nine thematically unified short stories, Christopher Coake returns to this well-trodden theme of the interplay between love and death and, in so doing, manifests a talent that places him among the top new formalist prose authors working today.

Coake, who teaches at the University of Nevada-Reno, weaves together a collection of stories that's lucid, stimulating, occasionally funny, and often unbearably sad. Two stories stand out: a brief, heart-wrenching gem-like story of terminal illness in "We've Come to This," and the creepy, thought provoking novella-length "Abandon," about a romantic weekend gone horribly wrong. The atmospheric dread of "Abandon," indeed, marks Coake as a potential horror writer equal to Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft at their best. Only one story, "Solos," misses the mark: The tale of a mountain climber's wife in Slovenia bogs down in local color and empty musing.

Two other stories--the murder mystery "All Through the House" (which unfolds in reverse chronological order) and the road tale "Cross Country" (which simultaneously unspools two narrative threads)--are enormously admirable technical achievements, although perhaps lacking in the pure emotional punch of the collection's best stories.

And, in any case, Coake's prose is always elegant and memorable: Even when his stories send a reader into the depths of emotional despair, one feels compelled to continue along for the ride.

--Joseph Light