House of Women: A Novel - Softcover

Freed, Lynn

2.9

225 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316095567 ISBN 13: 9780316095563

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2003

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Promised by her father to his wealthy and powerful cousin, seventeen-year-old Thea leaves her sheltered life with her mother, an opera singer and Holocaust survivor, to marry a man whose name she does not even know. By the author of The Mirror. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

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About the Author:

Lynn Freed was born and grew up in Durban, South Africa. She has written four other novels, including, most recently, The Mirror. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Story, The New York Times, and Atlantic Monthly, among other publications. She lives in northern California.

From Publishers Weekly:

Secrets twine around secrets in this haunting, intimate novel about the power of desire and the stifling force of isolation. Born to a wealthy womanizer and a vain opera singer, Theadora grows up on an estate with her mother, Nalia, at the southern tip of Africa. She is both spoiled and sheltered, never allowed to leave home unescorted. When Nalia goes inland for weekend sessions with her therapist, Katzenbogen, the maid, Maude, is left in charge. No man, not even Thea's father, is allowed up to the house. Later, it is clear why the gate is always padlocked; unbeknownst to her, 17-year-old Thea has been promised to her father's middle-aged cousin, a Syrian. He takes advantage of Thea's eagerness to see the world beyond her front yard, not to mention her yearning for male attention, and lures her from her haven. They quickly marry aboard a ship "And so it is done. I am to be married to a man whose name I do not know" and speed off to his nameless island home. Only there does Thea realize that this adventure might have serious consequences and question why the Syrian wanted her. The truth hardens her resolve to escape and see her mother again. Like a Jean Rhys antiheroine, Theadora strikes out fiercely against the world, but is helpless in the face of male desire. And like Rhys, Freed (The Mirror) imagines a world in which major events are only ambiguously described, but domestic details are sensuously immediate. This otherworldly tale philosophizes smartly on what it is to crave love and to sacrifice clarity for passion. 3-city author tour.

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