Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik has been on the shelf for awhile. I picked it up to complete a bingo square as it was a bestseller in 2003. It was a wonderful, bittersweet tale of a group of women in Freesia Court who form a book group in the 1960s and stay together for decades through happiness and sadness. I loved it and immediately loaned it to one of my lifelong friends.

This is the 2nd time I've read this book. It was originally recommended to me by several friends in my 'girls group' at church a few years ago. This time it was 'assigned' as a book club reading. I loved it both times! Strangely, as I read it this time, I realized I remembered nothing about the book, except that I'd loved it! I'd give it 4-1/2 stars if that were a possibility. The only reason I don't give it 5 is that towards the end, it seemed to have lost it's energy as the story wound down. Now that is not necessarily a bad thing, as the book traces the 'life' of a bookclub over 30 years. These woman also lost a bit of energy near the end, which is not unexpected as they are into their 50's and 60's.

The story is that of a group of show more neighbors who form a bookclub in the 60's. At times. the book ALMOST crosses into historical fiction, as events of the 60's, and later the 70's and 80's are worked into the story. It made the book kind of fun to read. If you are an older reader it will cause you to remember and reminisce. If you are a younger woman, it will provide some insight into what life was like before women had choices and opportunities. And if you are in between, you will get both!

As a group, the women face many crises as they confront spousal abuse, infidelity,infertility, illness and accidents. As a group, though they are tested, they manage to stick together and to support each other. Makes you wish you had a group of friends like that. The book is very readable. It took may only a few days to read it (both times) even though it is close to 500 pages! Enjoy! show less

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons is the story of a book club and the friendships and lifelong bond created among the five members. The book spans forty years as the women smoke and drink and bond. The book club survives through the hippie world of the sixties, the political awareness of the seventies, the fashion of the eighties and finally the nineties. The books they pick to read are an odd assortment, sometimes picked by the hostesses for the strangest reasons: Hotel by Arthur Hailey ("it is a bestseller"); Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver ("because we white Americans don’t know diddly"); and On the Road by Jack Kerouac ("sexy-looking writer"). Or Main Street by Sinclair Lewis ("help understand Minnesota more") and Slouching Towards show more Bethlehem by Joan Didion ("thought it had something to do with Christmas").

All beautiful in their own way, the women struggle with their personal issues of self-acceptance. Audrey loves her curvy body and her favorite topic for discussion is sex. For Slip, Audrey’s best friend, not having curves, or even looking feminine, was always a problem. Merit, the sweetest and quietest of the friends, could win any beauty contest, but struggles against her husband’s efforts to squelch her every attempt at independence or creativity. Faith, the talented Southern belle with a knack for design, is not all she seems. And finally, Kari, a widow who has wanted nothing more normal than a child to love, is the doting “Aunt” to every kid in her own family and the neighborhood.

The first- and third-person points of view change with each chapter which makes the narrative style feel a bit jumpy, and sometimes we have to leave a character at the end of a section when we really want to know what happens next. Of course, a positive ending is predictable, but that’s what you usually expect from a warm and fuzzy story like this. The books are a backdrop to the story and the book club intended for book discussions, eating, drinking wine, and conversation is fun, but the voices of the five women are what make the story so heartwarming. show less

My wish for you is to have a circle of friends like the characters in Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons. Friends to laugh with, cry with, read with, eat with, mourn with. From childbirths, adoptions, divorces and death, to homosexuality, social protests, spousal abuse and negligent parents – there was nothing this group of friends couldn’t endure together – with a good book as their common thread.

In Angry Housewives, five neighborhood women gather monthly to discuss a book selected by the book club’s host. For more than thirty years, they met without fail, picking books that reflected their times and their lives. Through these years, we learn more about the characters: Audrey, the sex kitten; Merit, the liberal social protester; show more Kari, the widowed grandmotherly type; Merit, the abused wife; and Faith, the secretive Southern belle. You meet their husbands, their kids and their pets. They’re like families you may already know (or wish to) – and they become the friends whose lives you take a stake in.

I think the depiction of these women is the ultimate draw of this book. You feel like they are real – perhaps reminding you of someone you know (or even yourself). Certainly their life experiences are not sugarcoated. You cringe each time Merit gets slapped by her abusive husband. You share Slip’s fear when her brother goes to Vietnam or when Audrey’s son was in a near-fatal car accident. You even get sad when Kari loses her beloved dog. Their experiences and reactions are much like your own, and each page of Angry Housewives draws you in– attaching you to each character, rooting her on, until you feel instant book withdrawal as soon as you read the last page.

Lovers of books everywhere – go out and get Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons. I don’t think you will be disappointed in this smart and fast read. show less

I have learned to avoid those books about groups of women who bond over years (and often over books and in book clubs) like the plague. However, for some reason, I actually read this one-- and liked it! The story spans from the 60's to the present day (or at least present day when published) and really rides the ups and downs of life. Nothing melodramatic or stunningly shocking-- just real. And there actually is talk of books! One of my favorite parts was that each chapter (told from the perspective of a different member of AHEB- the name of the book club the women form) gives the title of a book, and often a line or so why it was chosen.

The first couple chapters were boring and I nearly gave up, but then it got interesting when things started happening within the families. That was good for about the first half. Then the focus changed from the women themselves to what was happening with their children. This might be fascinating to parents, but it was really boring for me. It didn't read like a novel, but more like every childless-person's nightmare: listening to a proud parent regale you with the lives of their amazing, brilliant children: What they said the other day, what they're doing in school, who their friends are, what they find funny... Torturous. The book really didn't improve from there.

I think Landvik tried to cover too much ground here and didn't end up show more doing any of it very well. She's a competent writer, and that in fact saves the book. But the way the story changes first person perspective with every chapter was not effective. That technique doesn't usually bother me, but it just didn't work here, perhaps because not enough time was spent with each person to really get inside them. I think the story should have been told from Faith's perspective/third person. Because much of the story are her intimate letters to her mother, this seems like it should be HER story, and yet really we know the least about Faith and her family. Who is her husband? What's his response to all that happens? Who are ANY of the husbands? Why are the children so prominent, but the husbands are generally absent? And because you are with a person for only one chapter, and then don't see them again (much) until several years later, the result is big gaps in their story. It left me wondering about their life and what happened with this or that and how they felt about something or other. For example, it never really goes in to Audrey's emotional reaction to her divorce. She seemed to take it in stride, and yet they had seemed so in love.

Which brings me to realism. The Sex Goddess never finds another partner? No, I don't think so. Becomes a pastor? Even less likely. Counselor, maybe. Beau and his partner staying together YEARS later? Doubtful. But how convenient. Faith is just a plain nutcase.

I lost the book (literally) for a while when I was only about 50 pages from the end. At first I was annoyed, but then realized I didn't care if I finished the book. I knew by that time that the story didn't have any place to go. There was no "end", because it doesn't have a plot. This novel is like watching the rough cut film from cameras that have been set up in an average person's home. There are pieces that are interesting, and then much that goes with no value added. It's hard enough to develop one character and make them grow and evolve in a novel; Landvik tried to do it with 5, and didn't make it. show less

#56, 2006

I enjoyed this book. The title sounded like chick-lit to me, and I thought it would be a light, comic read, but it’s not. It’s not a downer, either, but definitely more “Ya-Ya Sisterhood” than “Bridget Jones.” It’s a saga spanning several decades of the lives of five women who form a book club, and the story of their friendship, and their lives. These women are the same generation as my own mother, so parts of the book (especially “The Seventies”) was interesting to me in the ways it reminded me of my own childhood – the cultural things and world events that were happening. On the whole, I found it very “real” – an interesting mix of characters and the challenges they face – infidelity and divorce, show more domestic abuse, the Vietnam war. And the central “thread” of the story deals with the woman who believed her own childhood was so loathsome that she created an entire fantasy past for herself. It wasn’t amazingly good or profoundly moving, but it was interesting and kept me reading until the end. show less