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Normally this isn't a book I would pick up, but it was recommended by a co-worker with whom I often swap books. She gets me to move outside of the dark fiction genre, so I usually try to read what she brings me. Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants was a great read and I could barely put it down. Eat, Pray, Love turned me off within the first four or five pages. I gave it two or three chapters before I put it down in disgust. So, it's a hit or miss proposition. Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons falls somewhere between the two extremes.
I was invested enough in the idea of getting to know the characters that I plowed through more than a third of the book before it really started to wear on me. The Angry Housewives really aren't all that interesting despite Landvik's attempt to make them individual and exciting. AHEB is rather clichéd and the whole "girl buddy book club" thing has been done. This book drew alot of comparisons to The Jane Austen Book club and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, neither of which I have read. However, if Jane Austen Book Club, the book, is anything like the movie then it does a better job nuanceing the characters and the plot in relation to whatever book that the book club is reading. As far as I could tell the books referenced in AHEB really didn't have all that much to do with the novel itself except in a very cursory fashion.
Each chapter of the book is headed with a mostly standard format (a format that changes for some inexplicable reason near the end of the book) listing the hostess for that month's book club meeting, the book chosen and the reason it was picked. Listing the hostess for about 90% of the book indicates whose perspective we're reading. There are four housewives: mysterious Martha Stewart-esque Faith, bombshell Audrey, liberal freedom fighter Slip, Susie Homemaker Kari, and angelic Merit. They are every woman you've ever read about, but it's all stereotypical stuff.
AHEB doesn't tell us anything new about being a mother, woman or friend that we don't already know or haven't seen repeatedly on a Lifetime Movie of the Week. There are some eleventh hour revelations that I saw coming a mile away, one of the housewives gets cancer and there's some bedside knitting, there's a road trip and a gay best friend. Every cliché and theme of female bonding that's ever been thought of (except for the cheating best friend has been covered).
I haven't read very many of the books that AHEB read so I could be missing whatever thematic highlight that I'm supposed to be picking up and if that's the case, if it's there and I'm missing it, then I still blame the author for not making it more clear how the book club novels tie into the events in the characters lives.
Part of the problem with AHEB is that the five characters all have a voice in the novel and they're ALL written in first person. Landvik writes characters in turn, by chapter, exchanging one set of I's for another. Tied to together by Faith's letters written to her mother, which begin faithfully enough but then dwindle towards the book's end, are supposed to help focus the reader but I didn't find that it actually works. As much as we initially think that this might be Faith's book or that she might have some huge impact on the housewives of Freesia Court, she doesn't. There are other inconsistencies, dropped plot threads, a lack of emotional engagement, nuance and depth. It's almost as if the author collapsed in exhaustion as she got to the end of writing the book.
A less than stellar read, flat characters and a long, mostly uninteresting history of events, plenty of clichéd characters and plots abound. Imagine squishing ever chick-flick trope imaginable into one place and you have Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons.
I was invested enough in the idea of getting to know the characters that I plowed through more than a third of the book before it really started to wear on me. The Angry Housewives really aren't all that interesting despite Landvik's attempt to make them individual and exciting. AHEB is rather clichéd and the whole "girl buddy book club" thing has been done. This book drew alot of comparisons to The Jane Austen Book club and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, neither of which I have read. However, if Jane Austen Book Club, the book, is anything like the movie then it does a better job nuanceing the characters and the plot in relation to whatever book that the book club is reading. As far as I could tell the books referenced in AHEB really didn't have all that much to do with the novel itself except in a very cursory fashion.
Each chapter of the book is headed with a mostly standard format (a format that changes for some inexplicable reason near the end of the book) listing the hostess for that month's book club meeting, the book chosen and the reason it was picked. Listing the hostess for about 90% of the book indicates whose perspective we're reading. There are four housewives: mysterious Martha Stewart-esque Faith, bombshell Audrey, liberal freedom fighter Slip, Susie Homemaker Kari, and angelic Merit. They are every woman you've ever read about, but it's all stereotypical stuff.
AHEB doesn't tell us anything new about being a mother, woman or friend that we don't already know or haven't seen repeatedly on a Lifetime Movie of the Week. There are some eleventh hour revelations that I saw coming a mile away, one of the housewives gets cancer and there's some bedside knitting, there's a road trip and a gay best friend. Every cliché and theme of female bonding that's ever been thought of (except for the cheating best friend has been covered).
I haven't read very many of the books that AHEB read so I could be missing whatever thematic highlight that I'm supposed to be picking up and if that's the case, if it's there and I'm missing it, then I still blame the author for not making it more clear how the book club novels tie into the events in the characters lives.
Part of the problem with AHEB is that the five characters all have a voice in the novel and they're ALL written in first person. Landvik writes characters in turn, by chapter, exchanging one set of I's for another. Tied to together by Faith's letters written to her mother, which begin faithfully enough but then dwindle towards the book's end, are supposed to help focus the reader but I didn't find that it actually works. As much as we initially think that this might be Faith's book or that she might have some huge impact on the housewives of Freesia Court, she doesn't. There are other inconsistencies, dropped plot threads, a lack of emotional engagement, nuance and depth. It's almost as if the author collapsed in exhaustion as she got to the end of writing the book.
A less than stellar read, flat characters and a long, mostly uninteresting history of events, plenty of clichéd characters and plots abound. Imagine squishing ever chick-flick trope imaginable into one place and you have Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons.
