Overall I found this book to be very interesting and I learned a lot. There is a lot of information here. I enjoyed reading the historical background. Parts of the book are just names and I found those part boring but the author is determined to make sure they are part of history. This book is best read in small doses. Despite some of the dry history the author does include some humor. I have never read "mansplaining death" in any of my history books before. Anyone interested in Women's History should read this book.

Ok, this is going to be a hard one for me to rate, as I DNF'd at roughly 28% of the way into the book.

I just couldn't anymore with the constant explanations of how women were silenced, violated, raped, murdered and treated as less than by the men in power.

Yes, it happened back then and is happening now in all parts of the world, but I just couldn't stomach it anymore. Yes the men back then, the poor ones, were also treated horribly, money or the lack of it was a factor in how the men were treated, but the poor men seemed to not have it quite as bad as the women, even the wealthy ones. But to be fair, this book wasn't focusing on the men, so I don't have much to compare it to.

This book was a HARD read and wasn't enjoyable after a while.

It also jumped around chronologically when in the 1400-1700 span of time. The book seemed to have been divided by different aspects of society, women and religion, women and war, etc., so there was a lot of jumping back and forth within the different sections. I would have preferred to see the same span of time dealt with, then progress on to the next in a logical time fashion, but I am sure it was broken down the way it was because it made more sense that way. There isn't a lot of source material the further back one goes, so maybe going in time order wouldn't have made sense?

Not a bad book and written in an engaging way, but there is only so much of murder of women as witches or because they were the wrong religion or having their rights slowly being taken from them that I can handle, engagingly written or no.

3.5 rounded down because I just couldn't finish it.

3, an incredibly important read, just also very difficult to get through, stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and HarperOne/HarperVia for an eARC of this book to read and review.

In one word: fascinating. "Normal Women" is a unique and all-encompassing glimpse into the life of women throughout history. As a frequent reader of history tomes, it felt so refreshing to read about women like me living their daily lives just like me. Philippa Gregory's writing style makes this book approachable enough that non-history lovers won't be intimidated.

In this incredibly detailed and well-researched book about English women’s history, Philippa Gregory brings her literary talents to bear in her latest book. Covering women’s history in England since the Norman conquest in 1066, Gregory focuses on the shared experiences of women from all social classes and statuses through the present day. With a staggering amount of historical detail, documents, and case studies, Gregory brings the daily lives and lived experiences of centuries of women to life with her exploration into the social, political, economic, and cultural roles and situations that women often experienced. Gregory’s incredible narrative style really brings this fascinating and compelling history to life, and the sheer amount of detail is absolutely amazing. While a long book, the chapters are subdivided by theme and topic, and the detailed case studies really make this book fly by. By focusing on the mundane moments in women’s history, Gregory turns away from her position as a historical fiction writer about royalty to give a similar narrative voice to those who history has forgotten in this absolutely enthralling history book, a must-read for all women historians and for English historians. Gregory’s skill and talent are readily apparent in all of her books, and this is no exception.

A LOT of information. But good information. I love the idea of this book.
It was very well researched and had some great stories, although sometimes it was hard to keep interested. I wish that it would have been available on Kindle so it was easier for me to read in bite size pieces between other books, but I forgot about it since it wasn't on my Kindle.

Definitely worth a read, although it would be good to do so in smaller chunks - so worth purchasing to have :)

<i>First, a thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an eARC of this book.</i>

Listen - I love the idea of this. I love the idea of giving credence to and a voice to women who have otherwise been overlooked by history. I love the idea of going over the evolution of misogyny (specifically in England) and unpacking what we've been presented as "human nature" and unmasking it as a creation of humanity, specifically men.

In practice, however... This book was pretty hard to get through. I started off reading it with my eyes, and was having such a hard time getting through it, so I had to wait for the book to come out and use an Audible credit to get it on audio to listen to.

And it still took me a fairly long time to finish!

I think it's just hard because you're being constantly bombarded with information, some of it jumping around between people and events rather quickly - so I felt really overstimulated and overwhelmed throughout the whole thing.

I commend Gregory for her research and work in this - and I think it was a wonderful idea for a book, and a very ambitious undertaking, but in practice... I'm not sure it really was executed as well as it could have been. But I can't give really specific feedback on what would have made it better.

This is an impeccably researched history of both extraordinary and everyday women from in Britain from the Norman invasion to the 20th century. The content is delivered for a mass audience and is reader-friendly for those at all levels of interest in the topic. This book highlights that women had a far more extensive impact on history than has been related in our textbooks or other retellings. This book is important in that it also takes a look at fluidity in gender roles and same sex relationships that have often been overlooked in ways that has not been the case for male history. The content can be quite dense at times, so I recommended reading in smaller chunks to absorb it all. Not to be missed for anyone interested in the history of women or even British history in general.

First line: I first had the idea for this book around the time I wrote The Other Boleyn Girl, when I found a woman, Mary Boleyn, who made her own remarkable life but enters history only as the sister to the more famous Anne.

Summary: Philippa Gregory uses her years of research as a historical novelist to explore the lives of women spanning 900 years of English history. Using newspapers, land deeds, court records, diaries and much more, she was able to piece together what life was like from the time of William the Conqueror until the modern day. Women worked, committed crimes, owned lands, loved and campaigned for rights but many of these women and their deeds have been lost to history or overshadowed by their male counterparts.

My Thoughts: It is no secret that I love Philippa Gregory! I have read nearly all of her novels with The Other Boleyn Girl being my absolute favorite book. Gregory does an amazing job of making the history easy to understand and interesting to the reader.

This is a DEEP dive into the lives of women, rich and poor, who contributed to the world but have barely made it into the history books. With each successive chapter she explores similar topics but at different time periods. I was shocked by how women’s lives and roles changed over time. At times women had rights to own land and make important decisions but within a generation everything was taken away. It all happened in waves of growth and then decline. I learned so much about women’s history in these pages. There are many stories about how women took a stand against tyranny or created wealth for their family or survived then thrived after the harshest wars and plagues.

Did you know that during the Black Death women were allowed to give last rites to the dying? I sure didn’t! Priests were in short supply or dying along with the rest of the populace. This is just one of the lost historical treasures Gregory reveals in her book. This was fascinating to read! I highly recommend it.

A very fun and interesting book to read! I loved learning about these women and the lives and times, I actually couldn't put it down a finished it in one weekend!!

The field of history for centuries has been focused on men and the struggles that mankind has had to endure for society to survive. We tend to get only a mere glimpse at the lives of women when they are next to powerful men. Some will write about women, mostly royal women, who lead extraordinary lives and left an imprint on the past. But what about those who lived ordinary lives? What about the women who lived daily, fighting to survive every obstacle? What can we learn about history through the eyes of ordinary women? Philippa Gregory has taken on the mammoth task of trying to answer these questions and more with her tome, “Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History.”

I would like to thank HarperOne and Net Galley for sending me a copy of this book. I have had an interesting background regarding Philippa Gregory's books. When I was in middle school/ high school, I started reading novels by Gregory and I became fascinated with the stories that she was weaving. It was only when I read other books that disproved some of the things that Gregory had included in her novels that I stopped reading them. When I saw this book and its praise, I decided to give Gregory another shot because, in the end, I enjoyed her writing style.

As the title suggests, Gregory covers over nine hundred years of English women's history, from the Norman Conquest to the modern day. It is a daunting undertaking, but the way Gregory presents the information is so easy to follow that it allows the depth of the subject material to sink in without it being too overwhelming. Each part of this book focuses on a different era in the history of England and has segments that highlight important developments during the era when it comes to women’s roles in society. As readers, we can see changes in society like how the church accepted women, how society accepted women, what kind of rights women had, what jobs women could do for money, how women viewed relationships with men as well as other women, and how men viewed women’s nature.

Unlike Gregory’s previous books and novels, the focus of this book is not the women who wore crowns, but women who lived everyday lives and survived whatever life handed them. Mothers, wives, daughters, soldiers, protesters, doctors, factory workers, Suffragettes, guild widows, pirates, highwaywomen, and women husbands are all represented in this book. By including small snippets of stories from women of every walk of life over centuries, Gregory allows her readers to discover more about these women for themselves, which is an exciting prospect.

I am so glad I read this book and gave Philippa Gregory a second chance. This book was fresh, innovative, challenging at times, and overall a fascinating read. By letting the facts and the stories of these women speak for themselves, Gregory presents the past in a way that is both inspirational and heartbreaking, raw and real. If you want to learn more about English women's history or you are a fan of Philippa Gregory, I highly suggest you read, “Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History” by Philippa Gregory.

Thank you to Net Galley and Harper Collins Publishing for an early copy of Normal Women by Philippa Gregory

Author Philippa Gregory has turned her attention to the everyday, normal female population beginning with the 1066 Norman conquest in England to shape and define the multitude of attitudes toward women over time. A picture of "one step forward and two steps backward" is appropriate and compels the reader to wonder if women will ever come into their due. It is nearly impossible to set this book aside as the voices of the characters resound and captivate. Victims, protesters, suffragettes, role models, warriors, medical practitioners---the women find ways to endure and often to succeed when the events of history and policy play so much against them. New heroines abound!

Many well-known persons over the ages from the Yorks and the Lancasters to Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher place Gregory's research into a continuum that is never easy for women. One of the most frustrating situations which never resolved is the division between the "elite" women of poetry, books and courtly life and the dangerous, pitiful and gruesome lives of the poor/working class women whose existence often held on by a thread.

Normal Women is best read in short segments which allow time to more completely understand women's history in England. The many drawings and photographs lend themselves to careful examination as well.

The Afterward by the author tended to be a summary of the book which after 500 pages hardly seemed appropriate. I would have preferred the author's more personal explanation of her journey including the highs and the lows of such an expansive body of work.

Philippa Gregory has proven herself worthy of both fiction and non-fiction excellence in developing characters and placing them in the context of their times.