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Summary
Summary
More than a decade after the New York Times bestselling anthology The Bitch in the House spoke up loud and clear for a generation of young women, nine of the original contributors are back--along with sixteen captivating new voices--sharing their ruminations from an older, stronger, and wiser perspective about love, sex, work, family, independence, body-image, health, and aging: the critical flash points of women's lives today.
"Born out of anger," the essays in The Bitch in the House chronicled the face of womanhood at the beginning of a new millennium. Now those funny, smart, passionate contributors--today less bitter and resentful, and more confident, competent, and content--capture the spirit of postfeminism in this equally provocative, illuminating, and compelling companion anthology.
Having aged into their forties, fifties, and sixties, these "bitches"--bestselling authors, renowned journalists, and critically acclaimed novelists--are back . . . and better than ever. In The Bitch Is Back, Cathi Hanauer, Kate Christensen, Sarah Crichton, Debora Spar, Ann Hood, Veronica Chambers, and nineteen other women offer unique views on womanhood and feminism today. Some of the "original bitches" (OBs) revisit their earlier essays to reflect on their previous selves. All reveal how their lives have changed in the intervening years--whether they stayed coupled, left marriages, or had affairs; developed cancer or other physical challenges; coped with partners who strayed, died, or remained faithful; became full-time wage earners or homemakers; opened up their marriages; remained childless or became parents; or experienced other meaningful life transitions.
As a "new wave" of feminists begins to take center stage, this powerful, timely collection sheds a much-needed light on both past and present, offering understanding, compassion, and wisdom for modern women's lives, all the while pointing toward the exciting possibilities of tomorrow.
Reviews (4)
Kirkus Review
Successful women writers reflect on being mature and female in early-21st-century America.In this sequel to The Bitch in the House (2002), novelist/journalist Hanauer (Gone, 2012, etc.) gathers essays by nine original Bitch contributors and by such writers as Jennifer Finney Boylan, Robin Rinaldi, Sandra Tsing Loh, and Kate Christensen. The book is divided into four sections and begins with musings on lifestyle choices. Original contributor Pam Houston begins the anthology by reflecting on lessons she has learned about herselffor example, how her need for alone time trumps any need for a relationshipsince writing her first Bitch essay. Transgender writer Boylan uses her move to a new job in New York as an opportunity to meditate on the upheaval that took place when she first came out. Sexual expression at midlife is the subject of the second section. Writers Robin Rinaldi and Sara Crichton write about the liberating sexual rebirths they experienced after ages 40 and 55, and Grace OMalley discusses the unexpected joys of weekly scheduled sex with her husband of many decades. In the third section, women tell stories of the tribulations of married life. Erin White discusses how she and her wife were the very opposite of radical in the problems they faced and overcame as spouses, while Loh reflects on the rocky road to sharing a less-than-perfect life with her lovable, getting-on-in-years boyfriend. The final section deals with different kinds of starting over. For Susan Sonnenberg, a new life meant taking a chance on the impulsive and rash and glorious" and saying yes to a second husband. But for Cynthia Kling, it meant a volunteer job teaching prison inmates that taught her lessons in what really matters in life. Sharp and lively, these essays offer insight not only into individual writers, but an entire generation of women coming to terms with the possibilities and limitations of their lives as older females. A provocative collection about what happens later, after those frantic, demanding, exhausting years with work and very young kids and, sometimes, not enough money. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Think of a problem every woman might face: getting older, falling in or out of love, rejoicing in the confusion of hot, steamy passion, and confronting the disillusioning loss thereof. Now think of how women cope with these obstacles or opportunities. Mostly they muddle through by talking to trusted friends, by digging deep within themselves, and by putting amorphous thoughts into concrete words. Fourteen years ago, Hanauer gathered a group of strong women to write about their experiences in the workplace and on the home front, in the boardroom and the bedroom, creating The Bitch in the House (2002). Nine of those original writers are back, joined by 16 new contributors, and all tell their stories, share their insights, provide wisdom, and offer encouragement with wit, compassion, and brutally frank honesty. Like an all-night gab session with one's best friend, these essays shed sincere and searing light on subjects that are often hard for women to face. In doing so, Hanauer and company give voice to topics all too frequently hidden under a damaging cone of silence.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
MUCH HAS BEEN made of the midlife crisis, often portrayed as the clichéd sports-car-driving silver fox with the shiny young girlfriend in the passenger seat. For women, the cliché is ... um ... let's see.... Why can't I think of it? Maybe because once women reach menopause, they, like their crises, become invisible. Well, not anymore. In Cathi Hanauer's anthology "The Bitch Is Back: Older, Wiser, and (Getting) Happier," 25 women from their late 30s to their 60s give voice - loudly, boldly and without apology - to the issues they face in Phase 2 of their lives, and what it all means in a post-feminist world. About 15 years ago, Hanauer was a working married mother of young children when she found herself, like her peers raised on assumptions of domestic and professional equality, consumed by anger. As she explains it, "We were exhausted, disillusioned, resentful and angry at our husbands." The resulting essay collection, aptly titled "The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage," laid bare those frustrations. (Her husband, Daniel Jones, edited a companion volume, "The Bastard on the Couch," and currently edits the Modern Love column for The Times.) Since then, a lot changed for Hanauer and her cohort: Children grew up, priorities shifted and identities emerged. Most notably, the searing anger had mellowed, and "we'd adjusted our lives and expectations accordingly." Of course, these adjustments looked different for different women, and now nine of the original contributors and 16 new ones explain, sometimes in excruciatingly intimate detail, how they're navigating "enlightened middle age." The women in "Bitch 2," as Hanauer calls it, grapple with companionship, widowhood, infidelity (including their own), appearance, cancer, their pasts, their parents, empty nests and finding love a second or third time, sometimes with men a decade or two younger. They talk about shame and loss, tolerance and compromise, their insecurities as well as their hypocrisy. In other words, they talk about the hard stuff, the gritty stuff, the stuff you aren't likely to find on their Facebook pages. And that's exactly what makes this collection at once thrilling and reassuring. It's the discomfort of the topics that provides comfort, a sense that however knotty our lives have turned out, they're far more normal than we think. Take the issue of sex. There's a marketing and sales executive who considers ending her otherwise "enviable" marriage because she's not getting any sex from her faithful and avowedly heterosexual but unwilling husband. Meanwhile, a financial adviser ponders the opposite quandary. To keep her beloved husband from leaving, should she force herself to have sex with him once a week? out in the postdivorce world, the publisher Sarah Crichton, in a tour de force of comedy and poignancy, describes the travails of dating again at almost 60. Discovering that her anatomy, once "as inviting as Gauguin's Tahiti," has changed, she enlists the aid of Vagifem and a vibrator. Even so, after having sex with her handsome boyfriend, she wakes up "on fire - not with lust, but with searing pain." (She's struck with sciatica; he, with palpitations.) But she also reveals a deeper, starker pain: "The vulnerability and the ultimate intimacy of sex is even more profound when you've lost more than you ever thought you could lose, and at this age, we have all lost too much." Susanna Sonnenberg, too, strikes a bittersweet chord when, happily in love after the end of her long marriage, she notes the challenges of trying to know and be known anew at midlife: "I have not locked eyes in the delivery room with David. I haven't met his mother." Other contributors re-examine their values. In one of the most affecting essays, Anna March writes about her hard-won battle to distance herself from her difficult mother, even after her mother's stroke. What do we owe our parents, she asks, not just the good or even the mediocre ones, but one who's a "solid F" with "a mental health issue"? At what point, she wonders, are we finally free to live our lives? On a seemingly lighter but equally complicated topic, Debora Spar, the president of Barnard College, tries to reconcile "nipping and tucking and suctioning and hormoning" - some of which she cops to - while also being a role model for young women. And Hope Edelman surprises herself when, in contrast to her previously ardent insistence on financial equality in marriage, she feels an "undeniable sense of relief" from not having to support herself. "Bitch 2" has a more mature and existential feel to it than "Bitch 1," which makes it all the more jarring when a few of the essays come to trite conclusions. But in the stronger pieces, which often pop with subversive wit, the anger of the previous book has been replaced by a graceful reckoning and the welcome realization that if we're trapped at all, it's only within the confines of certain realities. Instead of the problem being men or society, this time the grievances are with the human condition and the propensity to chase an illusory ideal. When Jennifer Finney Boylan, who is content despite her tricky marriage, is asked, "Don't you want more, sometimes?" she remembers a line from a friend's movie: "Well, no one ever wants less." Most of the essayists are professional writers, and despite their differences in temperament, race and sexual orientation, their concerns do fall into a similar bucket. So at first it feels surprising when the story of Kathy Thomas - a cleaning lady who dramatically flees from an abusive partner - appears, as if it landed in the wrong book. But near the end of that piece, Thomas says something that magnificently ties together these women's experiences. Reflecting on her situation, she tells Hanauer: "I'm not angry, though. Or sad. Or happy, for that matter. It's just life." Gaining that awareness, it seems, is the real gift of middle age. I can just see the rest of the Bitches raising their glasses to that. LORI GOTTLIEB, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, is the author of "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough."
Library Journal Review
In this sequel to her best-selling anthology The Bitch in the House, Hanauer brings together nine returning contributors along with 16 new voices to check in with her cohort of women experiencing midlife. The first collection focused on the anger and unhappiness of women struggling to balance professional careers with marriage and family life; this second book explores the lives of women who made significant changes in their lives. The results are mixed. Featured writers are overwhelmingly straight, white women with professional identities offset by a smattering of working-class and nonwhite perspectives, a lone woman with a cis gender female partner, and one trans woman's reflections. Several essays turn on the strength of the author's life partnership, but relationship tension and sexual dissatisfaction predominate. Many of the authors endured years of angry disappointment in themselves and their partners before making often-desperate change. Strikingly absent is critique of the structural forces and cultural expectations that continue to warp our individual experiences of marriage, parenting, and sexuality. VERDICT Readers struggling with unhappiness as wives and mothers may find solace in these stories; those seeking broader political or socialized solutions should look elsewhere. [See Prepub Alert, 3/14/16.]-Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, -Massachusetts Historical Soc. Lib., Boston © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
