A Woman's Life: The Story of an Ordinary American and Her Extraordinary Generation - Hardcover

Cheever, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688121942 ISBN 13: 9780688121945

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1994

Synopsis

Examines the life and times of forty-five-year-old Linda Green, a typical suburban wife and mother, and shows how her story reflects and informs the story of her generation

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Cheever (Elizabeth Cole, 1989) tried to use her own life as fodder for previous books; this time around she uses somebody else's. Here she tells the true story of Linda Green in order to explore the meaning of the American Dream for the ``average'' woman baby boomer. Born in 1948, Linda grew up in Passaic, NJ, as ``a princess,'' showered with pretty dresses and her family's undivided attention. Linda didn't disappoint them--she was a sensitive, ``pliant'' teenager who continued to live a 1950s life in the middle of the 1960s. During high school, she met an intelligent jock named David; later, in college, she got engaged to him, went on the pill, had sex, and got married. Unfortunately, her dream of Prince Charming fell apart when David dropped out of law school (because he no longer believed in the system), smoked pot constantly, ridiculed her job as a teacher while expecting her salary to support them, and promoted and practiced open marriage. Ultimately, Linda gathered enough self-esteem to leave. Not long after, she married Clint, an ex-pupil who at first seemed sensitive to Linda's needs but who turned out to be conservative, self- centered, and inflexible; yet she defends him, insisting that ``his life is hard too.'' Today, she sticks with Clint and their two children and continues her meaningful teaching career (although at a significantly slower pace than she would like). Despite her complex experience as a modern woman, Linda's simple dream ``is to have a happy family.'' Cheever's feminist interpretations of Linda's choices, drawing from the likes of Carol Gilligan and Susan Faludi, add little clarity or insight into Linda's condition. A less than extraordinary exploration of a woman who still puts everyone else's needs before her own, offering little hope of genuine fulfillment for her generation. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Linda Green, a 1960s hippie who lived on a Vermont commune, took LSD and let herself be pushed into an open marriage by her bullying, pot-smoking first husband, is now a suburban mother of two, a high-school Spanish and French teacher and a Boston lawyer's wife "settled into a routine that is both conventional and bourgeois." But Linda, 46, is no sellout, in Cheever's ( Home Before Dark ) empathic, beautifully controlled portrait. Instead, she is emblematic of "the average American woman, unrecognized, unknown, and often unappreciated, trying to hold it all together--family, job, health, attractiveness, sanity." Daughter of a Brooklyn hat salesman who moved his family to Passaic, N.J., Linda, by this account, was molded by a manipulative mother who instructed her to act as if she were always having fun. After her rebellious first marriage collapsed, she moved in with her former student, Clint Donahue, marrying him in 1978. Despite their considerable difference in age and religion (he's a devout Catholic, she's Jewish), their marriage has weathered crises--in no small measure, Cheever suggests, because of Linda's tireless accommodation to the needs of her husband and two daughters. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0688121942
• ISBN 13: 9780688121945
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 254