The Housewife Blues [Hardcover]

Warren Adler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2001

A born housewife, Jenny Burns meets and marries New York-bound Larry and, despite her husband's warnings, befriends a bizarre cast of characters in their New York apartment building. By the author of War of the Roses. 30,000 first printing.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Plucked from the bosom of her Indiana family by a whirlwind marriage to a slick talker from a Manhattan ad agency, Jenny Burns is thrilled to move to New York to become a perfect housewife. Adler ( The War of the Roses ) plants tongue firmly in cheek as he sends his wide-eyed, corn-fed heroine up against the yuppie element. Although Jenny's husband, Larry, is a blustering prig who bawls her out for fraternizing with the neighbors, she soon becomes the midwestern Mother Teresa in their East Side brownstone, doling out meatloaf and oddly modest sexual favors, offering redemption to an impotent art dealer and a suicidal salesman and helping hush up an affair gone awry in the life of a brittle, chic Vanity Fair editor. Larry, meantime, wheels and deals and belittles his wife until her rose-colored vision of him fades. In this breezy, bitingly funny novel, Adler creates an adept lineup of New York types, such as Larry's unshaven, expensively rumpled business partner Vincent, who clash with Jenny's wholesome aura in a string of amusing, though predictable, scenes that build to a gratifying climax.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

An old-fashioned, tongue-in-cheek domestic fable: a country mouse marries into the wicked, complicated world of the Big Apple. Plucked from her homespun Indiana life as a doctor's assistant, incurably good-hearted Jenny Burns keeps getting urged (mainly by her patronizing hotshot advertising exec husband Larry) to grow a shell that'll resist the threats of muggers, con men, and the homeless. But Jenny doesn't even have to go outside her East Side brownstone for her biggest challenges. How many times can she defy Larry by helping Jerry and Robert, the gay couple downstairs, look for their lost cat? What can she do about upstairs neighbor Barry Stern's fears that his impressionable son Teddy might be spending too much time with Jerry and Robert--or that Barry's own business failures might leave him with nothing left to live for? How far should she go to cover up the suspected adulteries of Godfrey Richardson (whose banker wife Terry has become Larry's target for a make-or-break business loan) or Myrna Davis (who wants Jenny to take delivery on what turns out to be a sable coat from a top-secret admirer)? And what will she do when she's confronted with evidence of Larry's final perfidy? Without pausing in her round of meatloaf and succotash dinners, the little woman bursts out of her shell into what looks like the early 1970's. Though such a conspicuously virtuous heroine is something of a stretch for Adler (The Witch of Watergate, p. 748; Senator Love, etc. etc.), he almost persuades you that Jenny isn't just an anachronism or a nitwit. Still, this entertaining parable is thinner than one of Jenny's yummy pastry crusts. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Stonehouse Press (May 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590060180
• ISBN-13: 978-1590060186
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Warren Adler is a world-renowned novelist, short story writer and playwright. His 32 novels and story collections have been translated into more than 25 languages and two of his novels, The War of the Roses and Random Hearts, have been made into enormously popular movies, shown continually throughout the world.

Three short stories from his acclaimed collection, The Sunset Gang, have been adapted as a trilogy and shown repeatedly on the Public Television network.

Mr. Adler's blogs appear regularly in the Huffington Post and other sites throughout the world and his short stories appear in numerous anthologies.

Mr. Adler is a pioneer in electronic publishing. He was one of the first authors to acquire his complete backlist and to convert his entire library to digital publishing formats.

A product of the New York public school system, Mr. Adler graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and New York University, where he majored in English literature. In 2009, he was honored by being chosen "Alumni of the Year" at NYU's School of Arts and Science. He has taught novel writing at honors seminars at NYU.

After graduating from New York University with a degree in English literature, Mr. Adler worked for the New York Daily News before becoming Editor of the Queens Post, a prize winning weekly newspaper on Long Island. His column, "Pepper on the Side," became a staple of a number of newspapers in the country.

During the Korean War, after basic training, he was recruited by Armed Forces Press Service to serve in the Pentagon as the only Washington Correspondent for the service. His Washington by-line went all over the world and was published in every publication put out by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Who said being a housewife was boring?, December 29, 2008

By 

Tracey Cramer-Kelly "Military and EMS Fiction... (Small-town St. Francis, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Housewife Blues (Paperback)

This book starts out a tad slow but don't let that turn you away - Adler is setting up a little background on each of the characters that inhabit the apartment building and it's well worth it as the story progresses.
Rarely do I find an author able to write from so many different characters' perspectives (5? 6?) and still keep my interest. Jenny, the main character (and housewife of the title) is delightful: at times you want to cuff her (gently) upside the head and other times you feel like jumping up and down to root her on. (Which is, of course, the mark of an engaging character!) Adler does an especially good job of Jenny's gradual transformation and "coming into her own." (You gotta wonder how a MAN can put himself in the head of a housewife...) Larry is a piece of work - I enjoyed an intense dislike for him! And I won't spoil the ending, but I will say it was quite satisfying!

4.0 out of 5 stars City mouse/country mouse comedy, May 31, 2005

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Housewife Blues (Hardcover)

Jenny, traditional small-town Hoosier girl, meets Larry, Manhattan go-getter adman. He wants a loving helpmate, she wants a man to nurture. It's a match made in old-fashioned heaven.

As wickedly funny, if not as wicked, as his earlier "The War of the Roses," Adler's "The Housewife Blues" is a classically choreographed comedy of manners. The story, seen primarily through Jenny's eyes, takes place in the small New York apartment building where she spends her days.

Larry, a shark of the new school, warns Jenny against her neighborly inclinations. But Jenny can't help but take an interest in the attractive couple upstairs, inviting them to a down-home dinner which makes Larry writhe in embarrassment and does not elicit a return invitation. And she can't turn a blind eye to the glum couple whose teenage son secretly visits the gay couple in the basement.

Being home all day it's only natural she would accept a package for the brittle career-woman with the clandestine weekend lover or look after the gay couple's errant cat, or offer tea and cookies to the teenager when he loses his keys.

Quickly enmeshed in their lives, Jenny keeps more of her activities from Larry while worrying over his big career move. Appalled and touched to discover that hard-nosed New Yorkers, given half a drop of encouragement, are a lot less reticent about their private affairs than the staid folks back home, she lends a squeamish ear and a generous heart.

Then, at a painfully funny dinner party, Jenny learns more than she wants to know about her Larry. Her coming-of-age is fraught with struggles to keep her comfortable illusions while rationalizing her own secret life.

Adler's style is straightforward and understated, his humor and observation no less sharp for being laconically delivered. Jenny is a delightful character whose plunge into life is wholeheartedly based on optimistic homilies like "People are people everywhere." And if Larry is little more than a cut-out, he seems the sort of handsome mistake a young, naively ambitious girl could make.

Portsmouth Herald