In Her Day [Mass Market Paperback]

Rita Mae Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1988

For years a "lost" collector's item, here is the second novel from a brilliant young author testing her literary muscle, and it's bursting at the seams with Rita Mae Brown's trademark cast of characters and crackling quips. Written immediately after her classic Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day takes a loving swipe at the charged political atmosphere of Greenwich Village in the early seventies. Elegant art history professor Carole Hanratty insists brains transcend lust—until she crashes into Ilse, a revolutionary feminist flush with the arrogance of youth. Blazing with rhetoric, their romance is a sexual and ideological inferno. Ilse campaigns to get Carole to join The Movement, but forty-four-year-old Carole and her zany peers have twenty years of fight behind them and are wary of causes bogged down in talk. After all, says Carole's best friend, the real reason for a revolution is so the good things in life circulate. Her idea of subversion is hiring a Rolls-Royce to go to McDonald's. In Her Day, with its infectious merriment and serious underpinnings, proves that if politics is the great divider, humor is the ultimate restorative.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

For years a "lost" collector's item, here is the second novel from a brilliant young author testing her literary muscle, and it's bursting at the seams with Rita Mae Brown's trademark cast of characters and crackling quips. Written immediately after her classic Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day takes a loving swipe at the charged political atmosphere of Greenwich Village in the early seventies. Elegant art history professor Carole Hanratty insists brains transcend lust--until she crashes into Ilse, a revolutionary feminist flush with the arrogance of youth. Blazing with rhetoric, their romance is a sexual and ideological inferno. Ilse campaigns to get Carole to join The Movement, but forty-four-year-old Carole and her zany peers have twenty years of fight behind them and are wary of causes bogged down in talk. After all, says Carole's best friend, the real reason for a revolution is so the good things in life circulate. Her idea of subversion is hiring a Rolls-Royce to go to McDonald's. In Her Day, with its infectious merriment and serious underpinnings, proves that if politics is the great divider, humor is the ultimate restorative.

From the Inside Flap

For years a "lost" collector's item,  here is the second novel from a brilliant young  author testing her literary muscle, and it's bursting  at the seams with Rita Mae Brown's trademark cast  of characters and crackling quips. Written  immediately after her classic Rubyfruit  Jungle, In Her Day takes a  loving swipe at the charged political atmosphere of  Greenwich Village in the early seventies. Elegant  art history professor Carole Hanratty insists  brains transcend lust--until she crashes into Ilse, a  revolutionary feminist flush with the arrogance of  youth. Blazing with rhetoric, their romance is a  sexual and ideological inferno. Ilse campaigns to  get Carole to join The Movement, but  forty-four-year-old Carole and her zany peers have twenty years  of fight behind them and are wary of causes bogged  down in talk. After all, says Carole's best  friend, the real reason for a revolution is so the good  things in life circulate. Her idea of subversion  is hiring a Rolls-Royce to go to  McDonald's. In Her Day, with its infectious  merriment and serious underpinnings, proves that if  politics is the great divider, humor is the ultimate  restorative.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (October 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553275739
• ISBN-13: 978-0553275735
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.4 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,005,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of the Sister Jane novels-Outfoxed, Hotspur, Full Cry, The Hunt Ball, The Hounds and the Fury, The Tell-Tale Horse, and Hounded to Death-as well as the Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries and Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day, Six of One, and The Sand Castle, among many others. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Have you made the acquaintance of Rita Mae Brown yet?, November 10, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In her day (Paperback)

Have you made the acquaintance of Rita Mae Brown yet?
In her day is Rita Mae Brown's 2nd novel, and it's a goodie, full of quirky characters, cracking wit, wicked humor - and also full of love for her fellow flawed humans. Brown, for those who don't know, is lesbian, and she's at her best dealing with characters who come up against surprising twists in their own sexual yearnings.
Okay. In Her Day deals with Carole (with an `e'), a cerebral art history professor who is cool, cool, cool until she bangs smack dab into Ilse, a feminist in full battle regalia. Romance, shall we say, ensues. But there's trouble due to the fact that Ilse is significantly younger then Carole, so there are generational issues to resolve in the feminism wars.
...It's great.
Read it.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Her Best, March 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: In Her Day (Mass Market Paperback)

Having read every book Rita Mae Brown has ever published, I have to say that this is still one of my favorites. The characters are, as always, beautifully developed in the ceaselessly witty storyline she is famous for. This is one of the few lesbian romances you can feel good about reading in public and sharing with everybody.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great story on the May-December relationship, March 5, 2006

By 

Echo "DragonsEcho" (Marysville, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Her Day (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is a bit slow to start, but after you get into the characters, you begin to see a wonderful display of what happens in a May-December relationship (one much older than the other). Throughout the story, you are given equal information about both sides, what they are feeling and how thier totally different lives feed off of each other, that is until they are in the bedroom. That is where they put aside their differences. A good read, a great storyline, and another brilliant book from Rita Mae Brown.