Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

by Lorna Landvik (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: Mary Jo, Aunt Kari, Freesia Court (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

• Mass Market Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Fawcett (March 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345475690
• ISBN-13: 978-0345475695
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (191 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,064 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 60 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.

14 of 15 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)

This review is from: Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

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 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay reading, too many characters and issues, March 2, 2004

By	Erin E. Willis "Erin Willis" (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

This book is a fast, light read. Ms. Landvik tells a good story but I had several issues:

- Point of View (POV): There are six POVs in this book, some in first and some in third. The author isn't consistent in POVs throughout a chapter, and the jumps to other characters can be difficult to follow.
- Plot: Every plot line except the kitchen sink is thrown into this novel. Issues include spousal abuse, alcoholism, drug use, race relations, war, peace protests, car accidents, adultery, infertility, homosexuality, AIDS, and cancer. A crisis arises, it's dealt with, and the story moves on to another crisis. The author could have trimmed the scope and characters and focused more on a smaller list of issues.
- Slip: Slip was the most annoying character. The woman never met a rally she couldn't protest or a gathering she couldn't crash. Her political preaching was over the top. Standing up for the proletariat? Wouldn't the failure of socialism in the USSR, North Korea, Cuba, in fact every country it's been attempted, encourage the author to leave this plot line out of the novel? I nearly put the book down several times because all Republicans were portrayed as uptight and bad, and all Democrats (of course, all the characters are Democrats) were fun and good.
- Vietnam: The recycling of the psychologically-damaged Vietnam veteran was also irritating. Does Ms. Landvik know any men who actually served in Vietnam? I know several, including a medic who saw truly horrific fights and wounds, and all these men lead normal lives. All war leaves scars, both mental and physical, but most Vietnam veterans didn't come home and drift through life, lost. Every vet in this novel is a basketcase, unable to function in life.

I enjoyed parts of the story, but I wouldn't consider it a great book. There are more enjoyable books that deal with women's issues without throwing in EVERY problem. I recommend Fried Green Tomatoes.