By the Book [Hardcover]

Susan M. Malone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1993

Nettie Rhodes, like millions of American women who want to be "Good Christians," had accepted her husband's authority and his ideas about her role, until she escapes from the subtle incarceration of her own guilt about the strivings of her intellect.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This painfully detailed first novel limns the psyche of a Fort Worth housewife in her late 30s whose loutish, manipulative husband subjects her to physical and emotional abuse in the name of Jesus Christ and "family values." Childless, jobless and pathetically dependent on her husband Roger, Nettie Rhodes has little contact with the world outside her immaculately tended home other than weekly visits with her feminist, "heathen" sister Becca and nieces Sara and Jeannie. The author fails to make convincing Nettie's abject submission to Roger, an obvious alcoholic who engages in extramarital affairs, is obsessed with sadistic pornography, beats his wife mercilessly and never attends church, although he insists that she do so. The story becomes somewhat more believable when a family tragedy forces Nettie to change her life and two elderly aunts help her understand how she has been an accessory to her victimization. But the book never really recovers from its early portrayal of a grim existence that doesn't quite ring true.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Malone's first novel tells the story of Nettie Rhodes, a housewife who is abused by her husband and subjugated into submission by her religion. Her only friend is her sister, a liberated member of NOW. By listening to her sister, Nettie undergoes a gradual transformation from a timid housewife into a self-aware, enlightened individual. Her story is interesting, but, unfortunately, not quite believable. After 17 years telling her how to clean the house and beating her for imagined slights, her husband hardly says a word when she finally leaves him. In addition, Nettie makes this transformation from a shadow to a real person without seeming to realize it. It may be that life does change in this way--so gradually that monumental changes are unnoticed--but the reader is left wishing for characters who are more thoughtful. Reasonably entertaining but not an essential purchase.
- Kathy Armendt Sorci, IIT Research Inst., Annapolis, Md.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 247 pages
• Publisher: Baskerville Publishers (May 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880909006
• ISBN-13: 978-1880909003
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,639,338 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Award-winning author and free-lance editor Susan Mary Malone's works focus on women's issues, touching the inner emotions of the feminine psyche. She is the author of the novel, By the Book and three co-authored nonfiction books, including Five Keys for Understanding Men: A Woman's Guide. With many published short stories to her credit, Malone also contributed to the anthology Wild Women, which includes Margaret Atwood, Alice Walker, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, among others. Many of her new short stories are up on Amazon Shorts as well. A freelance book editor, forty-plus Malone-edited books have now sold to Traditional publishers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Believable, but needs more exposition, June 14, 2003

By 

Berindun (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: By the Book (Hardcover)

This book starts in the midst of the story, as all tales -- fiction or nonfiction -- must do, unless one begins with the start of Time. So the reader begins with a 2-dimensional view of Nettie with no real understanding of why she is caught in the particular situation in which she finds herself. Unfortunately, the blanks are never fully filled in for those who haven't been indoctrinated in the authoritarian, fundamentalist view of husband/wife, male/female, clergy/layperson relationships.

Also unfortunately, I have, so I could readily understand why Nettie initially felt herself trapped in the narrow sphere dictated by her husband. All her life she had sought refuge in passivity, a stance perversely bolstered by her sister's opposite reaction of fierce independence. Reasons for this are hinted at throughout the book, but never fully fleshed out. It took a childhood under the thumb of a difficult mother and years of grinding down by an anti-woman culture and the rule of a "nice" ("I'm only doing this for your own good") husband to bring her to the state she was in at the start of the book.

It took an unthinkable tragedy to shock her out of her numb state and bring her to a gradual realization of the self she had sublimated her whole life. I found her slow awakening realistic, because she wasn't just re-evaluating her current circumstances, she was having to redefine herself from the ground up.

As she reconnected with life, the narrative itself became more solid and "real." I found the descriptive passages quite evocative, especially as she travelled the almost-forgotten road to her almost-forgotten aunts, a trip in itself inspired by letters she discovered that had been written by a relative she'd never known. The parallel drawn between Nettie and this never-known woman was intriguing, but curiously left rather unresolved. Was Nettie consciously breaking away from the path chosen by this relative in the same way she was slowly letting go of the life she'd always lived?

In the end Nettie seemed to have reached at least the start of a journey where she made her own choices, in her own way, rather than sacrificing herself to others' expectations. For those who have had to struggle to launch a similar journey, the freeing of her soul will resonate. For others, whose experiences of soul suppression are different, it may seem to be much ado about little.