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69 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding Novel of Friendship and Its Importance To Women, May 16, 2003
Good friends and good books---who could ask for anything more? Especially if you happen to throw in lots of good food featuring heavy doses of chocolate----and you have a fascinating neighborhood book club called Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons. Faith is a transplanted Southerner feeling out-of-place in the frozen wasteland of Minnesota when one night a power outage sends her outdoors to meet her neighbors in a snowball fight that will change her life. Years later, when a therapist asks her how she was able to hold things together for so long, she will reply "That's easy. I belong to a book club." For it is on that cold and snowy night that Faith and four of her neighbors conceive of a book club that will bind them for life and see them through their darkest traumas and most joyful events. Readers will be totally engrossed in the lives of these stay-at-home moms: Faith, who hides a past that shames her; Audrey, the proverbial sex kitten who can't hold her husband; Merit, the shy introvert who suffers physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her doctor husband; Slip, the antiwar activist who finds plenty to shout about during the Vietnam era; and Kari, the widowed elder of the group whose life takes on new meaning when an unexpected event gives her the child she has always longed for. From the sixties to the nineties you will follow these women and share their deep friendship, big laughs, and heart-breaking tears. The big bonus for book-lovers is that each chapter features the book title and author being discussed at the monthly meeting. Your interest will be piqued as you rediscover old favorites and may be inspired to read a few you missed along the way. Lorna Landvik has created unforgettable characters, strong women who discover amazing things about themselves as they adapt to changing times and changing lives. I heartily recommend this most enjoyable book and only wish my own neighborhood had a chapter of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
30 years of bon bons and books, July 16, 2004
Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons is the sort of tale that makes you laugh out loud, cry (repeatedly), reminisce, and feel privileged to be invited along for the ride. The story of five women on a cul-de-sac in Minneapolis, Minnesota, their adventures, their confessions, and their joys made me want to be part of their book club, their neighborhood, their lives. Narrated in turn by each of the five, while the other four weave in and out of each chapter, AHEB covers 30 years' worth of book club meetings, and incidentally, their raising their children to adulthood. Each woman has traits to admire and to recoil from; most of us will identify with at least one of them. Motherly Kari (who has no child), Confident Audrey (sex on the brain, all the time), Terrified Merit (the beauty without power who rebels quietly), Indomitable Slip (small but powerful), Secretive Faith (whose casual lies keep all from knowing who she really is). Typical readers of the genre will find at least one to identify with and use the others as foils. We get to know all of them well enough to care. It's not the emptiness of "chick lit" but it's not canonical either; this is 99.44% pure middlebrow. The housewives are upper-middle-class moms who are affected by cultural changes despite their priveleged place; by the early nineties all of them have returned to work. Some of the book is overly formulaic; by setting each chapter as a book club meeting, the author clearly used best-seller lists through the last 30 years. Would such a book club always be ahead, or even on, that curve? The sixties and early seventies seem more accurately researched and presented than the later seventies through early nineties; there was little sense of emotional presence or changed times in those chapters. Think about all the little things we can't live without now that weren't there in 1985, like drive-through espresso or cell phones or the Internet (which earns a very brief mention at the end); it's hard to tell 1978 from 1998 in this book other than the kids getting older. This novel is reminiscent of similar group histories such as How to Make an American Quilt by way of Marilyn French's The Women's Room. While it is unfair to characterize the women of AHEB as merely a book club (since they all live on the same street, they are a community first and foremost), using literature as history is an interesting device. The little snips of each woman's lives around the monthly meetings are taken in like a box of bon-bons: sweet, enjoyable, yet too much of it may not be that good for you. by Maddi Hausmann Sojourner, 15 July 2004
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Even a Man Can Like This Book, May 2, 2003
Ok -- I'm not part of the sisterhood. I'm male and I'm straight and normally guys like me would be put off by a book like this. Yet, I was drawn to it by its goofy title and ended up enjoying the book because of its memorable characters. The short summary of the book is that you follow the lives of four housewives and neighbors who form a book club and meaningful friendships. Along the way, you get a taste of the way the world changed between the 1970's and 1990's and you get to feel as if you know the main characters quite well. What I found amazing is that you even get to like and remember secondary and supporting characters such as husbands and children. Most importantly all of this happens with a lot of humor, some insight and the occasional sappy story that might draw a tear or two. My only fault with the book is that it seemed much more richer at the beginning of the book as the characters first learned more about each other. Later on in the book, the human interaction seems to slow a bit. In fact, the book club even adds a gay male as a member whose role as a confidant is important but seems to distract at times. As a whole I enjoyed it a great deal and found myself laughing out loud more than a few times. I also marveled at how close and important female friendships can be. Some other reviewers have mentioned that there are other books that cover this ground better. While that might be true, I would endorse this book to just about anyone.
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