Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "A Fuller Brush salesman had the unfortunate task of trying to sell his wares to the women of Freesia Court during the fifth day of..." (more)
Key Phrases: angry housewives, Aunt Kari, Freesia Court, Leslie Trottman (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Five friends live through three decades of marriages, child raising, neighborhood parties, bad husbands and good brownies-and Landvik (Patty Jane's House of Curl) doesn't miss a single cliche as she chronicles their lives in this pleasant but wholly familiar novel of female bonding. When Faith Owens's husband is transferred from Texas to the "stupid godforsaken frozen tundra" of Freesia Court, Minn., in 1968, her life looks like it's going to be one dull, snowy slog-until the power goes out one evening and a group of what appear to be madwomen start a snowball fight in her backyard. These dervishes turn out to be her neighbors: antiwar activist Slip; sexpot Audrey; painfully shy Merit; and widow Kari. They become fast friends and decide to escape their humdrum routine by starting the Freesia Court Book Club, later given the eponymous name by one of their disgruntled husbands. As the years pass, Audrey and Merit get divorced, Kari adopts her niece's illegitimate baby, all five of the women find work outside their homes and they even smoke a joint together. Their personal dramas are regularly punctuated by reflections on political milestones ("First Martin Luther King, Jr., then Bobby Kennedy. As if we didn't have enough to worry about with this stupid war..."). While some scenes are touching and genuinely funny, readers of Fannie Flagg, Rita Mae Brown, Rebecca Wells and many imitators will feel that they've seen this before.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

At the heart of this new work from the popular Landvik (Welcome to the Great Mysterious) is the Freesia Court Book Club, whose five women members go through a lot together.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; First Edition edition (February 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345442822
• ISBN-13: 978-0345442826
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (196 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #339,804 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Novel of Friendship and Its Importance To Women, May 16, 2003

By	Antoinette Klein (Hoover, Alabama USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons (Hardcover)

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.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 30 years of bon bons and books, July 16, 2004

By	Maddi Hausmann Sojourner "madhaus" (Silicon Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The world's most perfect children, March 16, 2004

By	K. M. Halbig (California USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Perhaps Lorna Landvik is not a parent so she doesn't realize that no group of children is as perfect as the Freesia Court children. Julia is biracial and adopted and floats thru life until she has a minor setback at 27. Bonnie is brilliant and apparently never talks back to her mother. Merit's girls are beautiful, talented, etc. and seem to suffer no problems due to the relationship of their parents. Even Beau is movie star handsome and finds the ideal mate. One of Audrey's sons does get into a little trouble, but it is not dealt with in this book. The husbands are either wonderful or horrible. There is no middle ground and no working through the ordinary problems that most couples face. These are all two dimensional characters and about as interesting as wallpaper.