If any of these questions have ever crossed your mind, meet Clover, the fifty-something heroine of Jeanne Ray’s CALLING INVISIBLE WOMEN. Clover panics when she makes the discovery one morning that her body can no longer be seen. Although her husband Arthur and their son Nick sit across from her at the breakfast table that morning, neither are aware that Clover has no body.
Wearing long sleeves, slacks, a hat, and sunglasses, Clover ventures out of her house into a world that does not notice her lack of a body. Luckily, she finds that she is not alone with this condition. The Organization of Invisible Women helps the members develop self-confidence and useful survival skills, particularly the freedom of being naked. After all, no one can see them.
Being unseen gives Clover and her new friends an ability to do Super Hero types of actions like stopping bullying on the school bus and stopping a bank hold-up. The women discover that the one thing that they have in common is a combination of drugs that they had taken and that the responsible pharmaceutical company knows of this side effect.
CALLING INVISIBLE WOMEN is a very light read, but it does have serious ideas. The author seemed to have two points that she wanted to make: how easy it is to over- look women of a certain age and how far large pharmaceutical companies will go to make a profit.
One quote saved the book from being silly : “…..before it happened I felt that I had all of the burdens of no one paying attention to me and none of the benefits. Now I can see how many things you can do when no one is watching. It’s a huge freedom when you think about it.”
So, if you ever feel invisible, dance as if no one is watching; it can be liberating according to Jeanne Ray’s CALLING INVISIBLE WOMEN.
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