In Every Woman's Life . . .
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
An insightful story of three women that wittily portrays the pleasures and pitfalls of marriage, parenthood, and being female in middle-class America
After the turmoil of the feminist movements of the 1960s and ’70s, three women are drawn together by family and friendship. Rosemary Streeter is a married mother of two who believes in the strength of family—even while having an affair. For Rosemary, “marriage is about family. It’s about raising children. It’s an economic arrangement. Passion has nothing to do with it, except maybe to get it started.” Meanwhile, hard-nosed, glamorous, and successful journalist Nora Kennedy claims to enjoy the freedom of being unmarried and childless, but secretly fantasizes about living with her married boyfriend. Rosemary’s teenage daughter, Daisy, struggles to acquire the wisdom of womanhood in the confusion of 1980s America. Rich with humor and compassion about the complexities of marriage and everyday life, In Every Woman’s Life . . . offers a fresh perspective on the role of women in society and on the American family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although Shulman (Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, etc.) turns some able phrases and makes valid points about the duplicities of matrimony and the constraints facing "liberated'' women despite the advances of the women's movement, her tale is arch and self-conscious. Rosemary Streeter, a smug, self-deluding ``dutiful wife,'' compartmentalizes her career, husband, children and lover. Not surprisingly, she believes that ``marriage is about family. It's about raising children. It's an economic arrangement. Passion has nothing to do with it, except maybe to get it started.'' Unmarried, childless and fiercely independent, Nora Kennedy, a beautiful and dashing journalist, ``relishes her clean uncluttered life'' yet yearns to live with her lover, who, alas, is married to someone else. Rosemary's daughter, Daisy, is apparently Shulman's hope for the future, the woman who doesn't ``settle for less than all''although her metamorphosis from a lovesick, rather witless teenager into a wise woman is abrupt. If men are as pitiably weak and if relations between the sexes are as bleak as Shulman paints them, readers won't want to dwell on the miseries pervading these cloying stereotypes.
