Best-selling <em>Virgins</em> published as ebook

Prof. Caryl Rivers’ best-selling novel Virgins is being republished as an ebook by Diversion Press this month. It’s a funny (and feminist) story about Catholic schoolgirls coming of age in a world that has no room for women who think or question the status quo. When the book came out from Simon and Schuster in 1985, it was a best seller and sold a million copies around the world. A film option is currently in the works.

The book has garnered rave reviews. The New York Times Book Review said, “Rivers demonstrates her sharp comic form right from the start.” The London Times Literary Supplement called it “Brilliantly comic.” The Chicago Tribune said, “Few other writers are as funny as she, and none funnier. Yet she is capable of wrenching your heart and soul.”

As Prof. Rivers noted in an article for the Women’s Media Center, it’s ironic that Virgins is being re-published just as the role of women in the church is a worldwide news story. The Vatican has told American nuns they should not be so outspoken on issues of women’s reproductive rights, gay rights and other issues, and accused them of being too feminist. The nuns have rejected that characterization. They point out that it is they who are doing the work that Christ commands—healing the sick and succoring the poor. Prof. Rivers notes that among her earliest role models of female strength and competence were, in fact, nuns

The BU professor is the author of four novels and nine works of non-fiction. Her books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Troll Book club. She is a distinguished scholar in the areas of gender and media, and has been widely published in the New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune. In 2008, she was awarded the Helen Thomas Lifetime achievement award from the Society of Professional journalists.

Virgins is available at amazon.com and bn.com
 or www.diversionbooks.com.