Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons
By Lorna Landvik
Completed July 21, 2007


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; 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. ( )