- Hardcover: 245 pages
- Publisher: Crown Pub (Sep 1992)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0517591723
- ISBN-13: 978-0517591727
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15 x 2.8 cm
The Housewife Blues
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Product Description
About the Author
Warren Adler's twenty-five published novels have won popular and critical success all over the world, and they have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Two of his books were made into major motion pictures, the classic "The War of the Roses" with Michael Douglas and "Random Hearts" with Harrison Ford. Three of his short stories were adapted as a three-hour trilogy on PBS titled "The Sunset Gang." The Lifetime Network is currently producing a pilot for a one-hour television series based on the heroine detective character of his six mystery books, Fiona FitzGerald. The series will be titled "Fiona." Kensington Press recently published his latest novel, "Mourning Glory."
Mr. Adler's themes deal primarily with intimate human relationships - the mysterious nature of love and attraction, the fragile relationships between husbands and wives and parents and children, and the corrupting power of money. Readers and reviewers have cited his books for their insight and wisdom in presenting and deciphering the complexities of contemporary life. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Excerpted from The Housewife Blues by Warren Adler. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
IF SHE hadn’t placed her great-great-grandmother’s spinet in that exact spot along the east wall and hadn’t set aside time to polish it on this particular April day, Jenny might have avoided any confrontation with this bit of unsavory information.
First there was Godfrey Richardson letting himself into the main hallway, which was unusual enough, since he was rarely at home during the middle of a weekday morning. She heard him climb the single flight of stairs to the apartment he shared with his wife, Terry, just above hers on the second floor. The Richardsons rarely used the tiny mahogany-paneled elevator, and she heard his ascending footfalls on the steps, not because she was deliberately listening, but probably because his tread was lighter than usual, as if he were walking on the tips of his toes.
She realized, of course, that she was conscious of the difference because it was out of the ordinary pattern of sound and activity of the weekday life of their building. In the two months that she and her husband, Larry, had lived there, she had discovered that she was usually the only tenant in residence on most days. A couple of the tenants had maids in for an hour or two a week, but they came and went with barely a ripple.
There were five apartments in their converted East Side Manhattan brownstone, and all of the tenants were normally off pursuing their various vocations during the day. As a housewife, Jenny, too, was pursuing her vocation, which she took as seriously as the others in the building took theirs.
Godfrey Richardson’s tiptoeing up the stairs, despite a rational dismissal of it as being none of her business, had alerted her to what followed. Looking out of the bay window through the lower branches of the budding sycamore tree that fronted the building, she had noted that a young woman had passed the building twice already, lingered in front of it briefly, looked up toward the Richardsons’ apartment, then proceeded toward Second Avenue. She was now headed toward the building once again, this time coming from the Third Avenue side.
Jenny continued to apply polish to the spinet. She had it on her mental schedule to polish the heirloom once a week. This was exactly the way her mother had treated the spinet in their house in Indiana, and one of the conditions of the gift was that it be treated the same way in perpetuity. It had been purchased by her great-great-grandmother, handed down to each generation in turn, and had never left Indiana. So far it had fared quite well in its new Manhattan life, had not warped and had kept its tune, although she rarely played it. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
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If she hadn't placed her great-great-grandmother's spinet in that exact spot along the east wall and hadn't set aside time to polish it on this particular April day, Jenny might have avoided any confrontation with this bit of unsavory information. Read the first page
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If she hadn't placed her great-great-grandmother's spinet in that exact spot along the east wall and hadn't set aside time to polish it on this particular April day, Jenny might have avoided any confrontation with this bit of unsavory information. Read the first page
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2 reviews
Who said being a housewife was boring?
29 Dec 2008
Format:Paperback
This book starts out a tad slow but don't let that turn you away - Adler is setting up a little background on each of the characters that inhabit the apartment building and it's well worth it as the story progresses.
Rarely do I find an author able to write from so many different characters' perspectives (5? 6?) and still keep my interest. Jenny, the main character (and housewife of the title) is delightful: at times you want to cuff her (gently) upside the head and other times you feel like jumping up and down to root her on. (Which is, of course, the mark of an engaging character!) Adler does an especially good job of Jenny's gradual transformation and "coming into her own." (You gotta wonder how a MAN can put himself in the head of a housewife...) Larry is a piece of work - I enjoyed an intense dislike for him! And I won't spoil the ending, but I will say it was quite satisfying!
Rarely do I find an author able to write from so many different characters' perspectives (5? 6?) and still keep my interest. Jenny, the main character (and housewife of the title) is delightful: at times you want to cuff her (gently) upside the head and other times you feel like jumping up and down to root her on. (Which is, of course, the mark of an engaging character!) Adler does an especially good job of Jenny's gradual transformation and "coming into her own." (You gotta wonder how a MAN can put himself in the head of a housewife...) Larry is a piece of work - I enjoyed an intense dislike for him! And I won't spoil the ending, but I will say it was quite satisfying!
City mouse/country mouse comedy
1 Jun 2005
Format:Hardcover
Jenny, traditional small-town Hoosier girl, meets Larry, Manhattan go-getter adman. He wants a loving helpmate, she wants a man to nurture. It's a match made in old-fashioned heaven.
As wickedly funny, if not as wicked, as his earlier "The War of the Roses," Adler's "The Housewife Blues" is a classically choreographed comedy of manners. The story, seen primarily through Jenny's eyes, takes place in the small New York apartment building where she spends her days.
Larry, a shark of the new school, warns Jenny against her neighborly inclinations. But Jenny can't help but take an interest in the attractive couple upstairs, inviting them to a down-home dinner which makes Larry writhe in embarrassment and does not elicit a return invitation. And she can't turn a blind eye to the glum couple whose teenage son secretly visits the gay couple in the basement.
Being home all day it's only natural she would accept a package for the brittle career-woman with the clandestine weekend lover or look after the gay couple's errant cat, or offer tea and cookies to the teenager when he loses his keys.
Quickly enmeshed in their lives, Jenny keeps more of her activities from Larry while worrying over his big career move. Appalled and touched to discover that hard-nosed New Yorkers, given half a drop of encouragement, are a lot less reticent about their private affairs than the staid folks back home, she lends a squeamish ear and a generous heart.
Then, at a painfully funny dinner party, Jenny learns more than she wants to know about her Larry. Her coming-of-age is fraught with struggles to keep her comfortable illusions while rationalizing her own secret life.
Adler's style is straightforward and understated, his humor and observation no less sharp for being laconically delivered. Jenny is a delightful character whose plunge into life is wholeheartedly based on optimistic homilies like "People are people everywhere." And if Larry is little more than a cut-out, he seems the sort of handsome mistake a young, naively ambitious girl could make.
Portsmouth Herald
As wickedly funny, if not as wicked, as his earlier "The War of the Roses," Adler's "The Housewife Blues" is a classically choreographed comedy of manners. The story, seen primarily through Jenny's eyes, takes place in the small New York apartment building where she spends her days.
Larry, a shark of the new school, warns Jenny against her neighborly inclinations. But Jenny can't help but take an interest in the attractive couple upstairs, inviting them to a down-home dinner which makes Larry writhe in embarrassment and does not elicit a return invitation. And she can't turn a blind eye to the glum couple whose teenage son secretly visits the gay couple in the basement.
Being home all day it's only natural she would accept a package for the brittle career-woman with the clandestine weekend lover or look after the gay couple's errant cat, or offer tea and cookies to the teenager when he loses his keys.
Quickly enmeshed in their lives, Jenny keeps more of her activities from Larry while worrying over his big career move. Appalled and touched to discover that hard-nosed New Yorkers, given half a drop of encouragement, are a lot less reticent about their private affairs than the staid folks back home, she lends a squeamish ear and a generous heart.
Then, at a painfully funny dinner party, Jenny learns more than she wants to know about her Larry. Her coming-of-age is fraught with struggles to keep her comfortable illusions while rationalizing her own secret life.
Adler's style is straightforward and understated, his humor and observation no less sharp for being laconically delivered. Jenny is a delightful character whose plunge into life is wholeheartedly based on optimistic homilies like "People are people everywhere." And if Larry is little more than a cut-out, he seems the sort of handsome mistake a young, naively ambitious girl could make.
Portsmouth Herald
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