#56 - Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons

I enjoyed this book. The title sounded like chick-lit to me, and I thought it would be a light, comic read, but it’s not. It’s not a downer, either, but definitely more “Ya-Ya Sisterhood” than “Bridget Jones.” It’s a saga spanning several decades of the lives of five women who form a book club, and the story of their friendship, and their lives. These women are the same generation as my own mother, so parts of the book (especially “The Seventies”) was interesting to me in the ways it reminded me of my own childhood – the cultural things and world events that were happening. On the whole, I found it very “real” – an interesting mix of characters and the challenges they face – infidelity and divorce, domestic abuse, the Vietnam war. And the central “thread” of the story deals with the woman who believed her own childhood was so loathsome that she created an entire fantasy past for herself. It wasn’t amazingly good or profoundly moving, but it was interesting and kept me reading until the end. 7/10