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Title: The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage by Cathi Hanauer ISBN: 0-06-093646-0 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (45 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Bracing and illuminating
Comment: Anyone under 50 who doesn't relate to the issues raised in these essays -- work, marriage, children, and compromise -- is living in a bubble.
Don't be put off by the title -- or by the common misrepresentation (like by Katie Couric on the Today Show) that it's the whining of women who seemingly "have it all." The point is, you CAN'T have it all, and have to try to forge happiness anyway. Crack it open and you won't put it down.
My favorites include "Atilla the Honey I'm Home" about a woman who is ultra cool and competent at work and then comes home and takes out all her stress on her family. "How We Became Strangers" about the effect the arrival of a first child has on marital bliss. And "Crossing the Line in the Sand" about losing your temper with your kids.
The book is organized in rough age order of the contributors, so it starts with women in their twenties just on the cusp of What The Future Holds, and ends with a few in their (60s?) about the roads taken and not. In between you have a wide range of experiences -- fidelity and not, equal parenting and not, successful relationships and not, getting married or not, feeling good about work or not.
These aren't easy issues and the book confronts them head-on. The essayists don't provide solutions so much as comfort -- a community of like-minded souls who realize what we're all up against and are trying to make sense of it all.
Rating: 5
Summary: Elegant confessions
Comment: Virginia Woolf had "the angel in the house." Well, Cathi Hanauer (that "I" in Cathi is soo telling in several ways) has the title of this book, and she's lived it. But the title is misleading. This is not so much a collection of estrogen rants as it is a grad school course in Reality Relationships.
Let me make you a little promise: if you are a woman between the ages of twenty-something and forty-ish, you will absolutely love this book; and if you are a male you will squirm a little and read as much as you can, and then after some digestion, read the whole thing. And then feel real wise or real dumb, depending.
The women here want a whole lot, and it is at first a little off-putting to read about their frustrations with the men who are never, but never, perfect. One wants to say, hey, guess what? Neither are YOU! And one wants to say, it doesn't take the wisdom of Solomon to figure out that you can't always get what you want, or that, for you in particular, and for every other woman in the world, there is no perfect man.
In fact, that is what most of the women in this book, writing so articularly, so passionately, so "honestly" (although at least one had to use a pseudonym, and I don't blame her), came to realize, and to take as part and parcel of the inexplicable bitter sweetness of life.
Let me give you a clue (not that I am any Solomon myself, but for what it's worth I have been there and done that from the male point of view): one does NOT (as Lucy from Peanuts once expressed it) go from "ups to upper ups" in life. Love and sex and passion and romance are like taking drugs, the more passionate the relationship the harder the fall and the more lasting the pain. The higher the highs, the lower the lows. The more fantastic the sex, the worse the rest is likely to be. Prince Charming only courts Grace Kelly or Jackie O, and believe it, Prince Charming had a fault or two. And yes, life is unfair. You will, nine times out of ten, end up doing more around the house and with the children than he will--even if you make more money than he does.
Why is this so? It's not just that men and women are different with different strategies and different needs (although that is true), but because any woman that doesn't do a better job with such things is not an alpha (w)itch to begin with, and certainly is not a woman that most men would want for the long run. The women who really care quite simply do more, and any man worth the discernment knows that.
I liked Hanauer's Introduction in which he lays out just how and why this book came to be. I especially love the way she and the women who wrote the twenty-six pieces WRITE. The prose is smart and sharp and knowing, very knowing. For example, after Hazel McClay ("A Man in the Heart") writes "Sooner or later I'll probably be tempted to cheat" she adds, "I'm not looking forward to that time." She has compared the man of her twenties, a man that was passionate and made her passionate, with the man of her thirties, a man she loves who has however "never wrapped me in his arms, never...kissed me until I gasped for breath."
Hazel McClay is not her real name. One sees why. But I suspect there will be some women reading this who would like to remind her of the women in Afghanistan and say, lady, you actually had everything, you just didn't have it all at the same time. Nobody does. At least not for long.
And there IS a reason that Karen Karbo ("Why I Hate That My Mother Was Right...") married not "horizontally" but "down."
And then there is Hope Edelman ("The Myth of Co-Parenting"), who also writes with elegance, complaining about the 92-hour weeks her husband put in. She had won "the boyfriend jackpot. He was beautiful and sexy, and devoted and smart...and he had the kindest green eyes." And then he became a work alcoholic and simply wasn't there.
I'm thinking as I'm reading this, hey, get a new clue: 90-hour weeks mean only one thing. But no, there is not a hint of another woman. And then I'm thinking, the guy is afraid. He is scared to death that the passion is going to go or has gone out of his marriage and he is compensating big time. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. And then, when it all gradually goes away and he begins to be home more and Hope Edelman has released "the dream of completely equal co-parenting," and all is, relatively speaking, marital bliss, I want to say, there is something you didn't tell us...!
But I need to let that go.
This is a fascinating book, a page-turner, filled with sharp observations and melancholy truths from some very bright women who learned those truths, or those partial truths, or those elusive truths, or those truths-in-the-making, the only way they can be learned, that is by living them. And they are very good at sharing. I came away feeling that, the woman in the house, having come home from work to "see a sinkful of dishes" and the man on "the couch, beer in hand, newspaper spread before him, stereo blaring the Dave Matthews Band"--that these two people have learned to live and love and accept the imperfections of one another and of life.
Rating: 2
Summary: Don't Spend The Money
Comment: While I agree that the essays were well-written and interesting, I have to agree with the reviewer who wrote that this book was annoying and "the women made their bed now lie in it".
Maybe because I'm not married and don't have children, I can say that I do not understand their frustrations but this is obviously the path they chose. My advice to the authors is GROW UP!!! Who said life is easy?
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Title: The Bastard on the Couch : 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom by Daniel Jones ISBN: 0060565349 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 27 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: I Don't Know How She Does It by ALLISON PEARSON ISBN: 0375713751 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Flux : Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World by PEGGY ORENSTEIN ISBN: 038549887X Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 21 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Mask of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes Our Lives and Why We Never Talk About It by Susan Maushart ISBN: 0140291784 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued by Ann Crittenden ISBN: 0805066195 Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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