The ‘real’ housewives of New York’s Upper East Side
Helen Ellis’s short stories focus unique lens on 2016 domesticity
The housewife has long been a conflicted figure in pop culture. The tension dates back to the desperate housewives of Betty Friedan’s 1963 opus, The Feminine Mystique, found dusting their picture-perfect, 1950s ranch houses in a fog of dissatisfaction, depression and repressed rage — all just one stilted cocktail party away from giving the PTA the finger, leaving their husbands and joining a feminist Consciousness Raising Group.
The updated version of the stereotype is, of course, the “real” housewives, defensively downing Champagne, as they shop, primp, gossip and brawl on an endless stream of god-awful reality shows.
That, or the smug mommy bloggers who log marathon hours online, preaching about the importance of DIY crafts, alternative health care, co-sleeping, gluten-free cuisine and natural cleaning products.
In American Housewife, U.S. novelist Helen Ellis takes this rich material and spins it into one of the most original and entertaining books in recent mem- ory. In these whip-smart stories, we encounter rich, warring neighbours in New York co-ops, fantastically manipulative book clubbers, washed-up writers who compete on Dumpster-diving TV shows and twisted etiquette experts for the 21st century.
Ellis is herself as wonderfully complex as her characters: a Southern belle who’s sweet as pie and tough as nails; a posh Poker Master; a housewife who identifies with ladies-who-lunch and is as affectionate toward them as she is scathing.
A Manhattan ingénue who published her first book, Eating the Cheshire Cat, in 2000 to critical acclaim, Ellis went on to experience a lengthy dry spell, quitting writing to become an Upper East Side housewife.
In the end, according to Vogue (naturally!), it was the gritty poker world that gave her the guts she needed to return to the page.
And her hilarious, anonymous Twitter account @WhatIDoAllDay helped rediscover her writing voice.
It’s this voice — witty, culturally current and endlessly surprising — that recently won the praise of Margaret Atwood (who called her work “cackle-making”). And it’s this voice that makes American Housewife such a thrillingly unique read.
Ellis is herself as wonderfully complex as her characters: a Southern belle who’s sweet as pie and tough as nails