The past feels astonishingly present in Joanna Miller’s debut novel, The Eights, a stirring work of historical fiction set in 1920s England on the heels of World War I, during the first year women are officially admitted into Oxford University’s hallowed halls.
Among the incoming female “freshers” are Beatrice, Marianne, Dora and Otto: the titular Eights, thus named for the dormitory floor they share. Strangers at first, each with their own private hopes and heartaches, they soon forge a bond of sisterhood stronger than blood as they head into the academic trenches, where they soon realize that the minds that most need educating may not be their own. United, these remarkable, resilient women face an uncomfortable new world in which they are dismissed, derided, desired and demonized (something that readers a century later will all too easily recognize), but they refuse to be defeated.
Rigorously researched, The Eights brilliantly synthesizes fact and fiction. Miller breathes life into a bygone era; her skilled storytelling makes it impossible for readers to discern which bits are based on actual events and which stem from Miller’s imagination, and the trials and triumphs of the quartet are deeply relatable. In particular, the struggle for gender equality and the impossible standards women face feel especially timely: A plot point involving a debate about whether women have any business being at Oxford prompts the novel’s own version of the famous Barbie movie monologue, “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 that with some men they can never win.”
Miller’s plotting, world building and character development are all excellent, but it is her facility with language that truly gives The Eights its power: Her prose is precise yet lyrical, restrained yet impactful, exactly what one would expect from a writer of award-winning gift poetry. The Eights is a rewarding read for anyone who enjoys emotional, character-driven narratives and for anyone who celebrates impeccable writing. But most of all, it’s for anyone who has ever been told they couldn’t do something but did it anyway.
