Customer Reviews

The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

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.

I realize this book was written by seemingly white, middle class Yankee women -- but it sure spoke to me, a black woman way down in the deep south.
Obviously, I didn't relate to all of these women -- some I thought were a bit triffling and way too self-absorbed.
But reading some of these stories was like reading my own journal, but more eloquently put, especially "Excuse me while I explode", and "How we became strangers".
I was comforted to know that I'm not alone in my daily struggles to be a good Mom, wife, friend, daughter and co-worker. Just that fact alone helps me to exhale and be grateful for all of my plessings.

I found several of these essays quite interesting, but grouping them together as a "women speak out" book is misleading. I found it frustrating that the majority of women in the book were upper-middle class, educated and for some reason they all lived in New York City (not all, but many). I'm assuming (but could be wrong here) that they were mostly white. It got me thinking...why didn't the editors get an essay or two from a Hispanic working-class mom in California? Or a divorced woman in Detroit?

Also, I hate to say it, but a lot of these women come across as whiny. I know, I know. I'll get kicked out of the feminist club for saying it (and trust me, I've paid my dues), but there's a lot of delusion among these women. They seem to expect the men in their lives to behave...well...like women. And that just isn't realistic. There's also a lot of justifying of what in my opinion is questionable behavior. Personally, I found the essay by the woman who had a married man's baby really frustrating. Not because she kept the baby and went on with her life, but because she seemed to have no guilt or remorse about sleeping with a married man. It's as if the man's wife doesn't exist at all to her -- she's written off in one sentence (did she ever even find out her husband fathered another woman's child?).

There are some terrific pieces in here, and the writing is very strong, but overall it was a depressing disappointment.

I was enthralled when I started this book of reflections by female writers on love, marriage, sex, and motherhood but towards the end it did become tiresome, as another reviewer said. It was just more of the same. No one was truly happy giving up the single life for a shared one with a man; the woman, despite her best intentions, always became "the wife" and an unequal partner. The one woman who had a husband who was truly fully engaged in fatherhood jealously competed with him for the child's attention.
Another failing was that all the women are fairly young with very young children. I wanted to see the same reflection from the perspective of older women whose children are grown and establishing their own lives. I daresay the stories would be quite a bit different when the authors are not so immersed in the experiences about which they are writing.
If I had read this book while still single, I would have found the stories of women feeling so trapped in expectations quite depressing.

Like many books that claim to be about all or most women, this book really only speaks for upper-middle-class women who appear to "have it all."

The stories were good, and written well. I especially liked the story about having houseguests by Chitra Divakaruni, because it talked about differences between Eastern and Western cultures.

However, I also felt a lot of these essays had an underlying self-indulgence, self-absorbedness and sense of superiority about them; almost as if the authors were unconciously bragging about their oh-so-stressful, over-achieving, affluent lifestyles while soliciting sympathy from the reader. "I never realized how difficult it would be to have it all: a loving husband, kids, a great career, the latest SUV!" If these women had been single working-class mothers with low-paying jobs, I would have felt for them much more.

I especially thought the woman in Sarah Miller's story was pathetic for feeling superior to her friend because she had a fiance and her friend didn't. It's like: grow up, already. She claims to be in her late 20s/early 30s, but to me she sounded more like a neurotic teenager. I also noticed that many of these women - including Sarah Miller's protagonist - admitted that they preferred men who were financially well-off. To me, these are not very feminist attitudes, and the women in this book are supposed to be so liberated. Talk about hypocrisy....?

If anything, this kind of mentality makes these authors sound more like shallow, spoiled Rules girls at heart.

If you want to know how yuppie women live from a sociological perspective, or you're dying to be one of them, then I highly recommend this book. There's also a male version of this book called the Bastard On The Couch, which I haven't read. If you want to read a book about struggles less "elite" people can relate to, I suggest an excellent biography of Meena, an Afghan woman who founded RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, by Melody Ermachild Chavis.

According to this book, the everywoman in America is a neurotic, passive agressive professional writer. While I'll grant that the stories were interesting and did ring true for me in some aspects, I ended up just being annoyed that the editor failed to seek out more diverse women with more diverse professions for her book. Couldn't she have found an engineer, a black woman, a Latina to chronicle their stories? Hanauer started out with lofty goals in her introduction, but didn't end up meetig them for me.

I'm intrigued that so many feel that this collection of essays is somehow lacking in awareness. Yes, I agree that many of the authors seem privileged, but they haven't always been so, and most of them are conscious of their status, if not guilty because of it. They are attempting to reveal their inner thoughts, wants, fears--which means they might not always follow the "party line," whether that be of the compassionate woman, wife, mother, or feminist. It is this vulnerability, this abilty to show doubt at their comeptence in any of these roles, that I found refreshingly honest, even when their fears were not grounded in what might be pereceived by contemporary society as "rational" thought, in spite of the hyper-intellectualism and education they supposedly "suffer" from. It was a joy to read, and it was nice to see that others in conflict with their roles, with themselves, with society, are so willing to share it.

I keep reading reviews that say these authors were whining and complaining. I couldn't find any of that. What I found were very diverse stories that kept me interested (almost)until the end! It was very interesting to read about these women with very different lives! Even though I don't agree with some of their lifestyles, I found them very honest and a quick read. I especially liked these stories:

Getting the Milk for Free--about a woman (like me) who has never felt that "need" for marriage, like so many others. She decided that "living together" was good enough.

Crossing to Safety -- about a woman who decided that she got along better with her boyfriend and they enjoyed each others company more--when they were living in different states.

Papa Don't Preach-- she had an affair with a married man and decided to keep the baby.

Why I won't marry-- a beautiful story about a woman who has a "common law" husband and the daughter they have, the lives they share.

Houseguest Hell--this is probably one of my favorites-- by Chitra Divakaruni... the clashing of Eastern and Western lifestyles--or why she is a slave to her houseguests.

My Marriage. My Affairs-- how a woman and her husband attempted an "open marriage," and how she really felt about it.

Anyway, not these stories are for everyone. I felt connected with them, because they let you into their lives. Maybe you won't live the kind of lives they do, but maybe you don't want to. A very good book.
Warning: my interest dropped a little toward the end. Other than that, it was great!

This book sounded like it would be terrific -- women talking about things women tend not to discuss. However, it wasn't at all what I expected. The contributors are mainly upper-middle-class magazine writers, which means that the pieces all tend to sound the same, and have a real feeling of entitlement. Too, there are almost no older women/women of color/etc.

I actually preferred THE BASTARD ON THE COUCH, because the men seemed a lot more dimensional than their wives (if as shallow).

I *loved* this book when I started it! The writers take a taboo subject -- female anger -- and write about it in funny, honest, personal ways. Most of the essays deal with women's rage at the impossibility of trying to "balance" career, motherhood, marriage etc. There were numerous parts that I nodded or smiled at, they felt so familiar and so aptly put. (One essay about how the writer is the perfect boss at work -- patient, supportive, even-keeled -- and then feels like an out-of-control wreck at home with her kids was titled "Attila the Honey, I'm Home."

However, about halfway through the book, it all began to blur together. Many of the essays were saying more or less the same thing. There were some that were different that stood out for me -- an essay about being fat, an essay by an Indian immigrant woman about having to deal with houseguests from home. But there were far too many that started to feel/sound similar. It started to feel like every contributor was a freelance magazine writer living in the NY area (okay, Connecticut too).

Still, I recommend this to anyone coping with the stresses of work/marriage/parenting in this strange transitional era we all live in. If you liked the book Flux by Peggy Orenstein, you'll like this book.