Synopses & Reviews
A sharp, funny, delightfully unhinged collection of stories set in the dark world of domesticity, American Housewife features murderous ladies who lunch, celebrity treasure hunters, and the best bra fitter south of the Mason Dixon line.
Meet the women of American Housewife:
they wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it’s cloudy. They
casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it’s a CPR
dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the
body to pull cookies out of the oven. These twelve irresistible stories
take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set
of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual
of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam, from
the gallery opening of a tinfoil artist to the fitting room of a
legendary lingerie shop. Vicious, fresh, and nutty as a poisoned Goo Goo
Cluster, American Housewife is an uproarious, pointed commentary on womanhood.
Review
“Deep and engaging… Delightfully unhinged… While her quippy
observations will draw attention, the longer stories reveal a literate
mind at work. Either she’s a genius at writing short or she spends hours
paring away flabby phrasing to make each sentence so tight you can
bounce a quarter off it… Ellis layers character quirks and details like
tinder and a tepee of kindling in a bonfire and carefully positions plot
developments to build the story’s heat and intensity.” Martha Sheridan, The Dallas Morning News
Review
“Ellis’s 12 short stories about women under pressure are archly,
acerbically, even surreally hilarious. By extracting elements from the
southern gothic tradition, Shirley Jackson, and Margaret Atwood, Ellis
has forged her own molten, mind-twisting storytelling mode. Her pacing
is swift and eviscerating, and her characters’ rage and hunger for
revenge are off the charts… Perfectly crafted… A breath-halting balance
of slashing absurdist humor and rich and authentic emotional
sensitivity… With monstrous children and cats, hopeless husbands, and
covertly dangerous women, Ellis takes down the entire housewife concept
with a sniper’s precision. These are delectably revved up, marauding,
sometimes macabre tales of ruined marriages, illness, infertility, crass
commercialism (literary product placement), desperation, ghosts, even
murder, featuring women of shrewd calculation, secret sorrows, and deep
sympathy.” Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
Review
“Ms. Ellis, 45, calls herself a housewife. But that only begins to
describe her. She is also a shrewd poker player who regularly competes
in high-stakes tournaments, and the author of a forthcoming story
collection, American Housewife, that focuses a dark and humorous
lens on the domestic… The stories are addictive and full of
pitch-perfect observations like, ‘the only thing with less character
than Chardonnay is wainscoting’ and ‘Delores was as fertile as a
Duggar.’ They are populated by, among others, neighbors in a co-op whose
fight over decorating turns deadly; women in a book club trying to
seduce a new member into carrying their babies; and a chilling series of
dead doormen.” J. Courtney Sullivan, The New York Times
About the Author
HELEN ELLIS is the acclaimed author of Eating the Cheshire Cat.
She is a poker player who competes on the national tournament circuit.
Raised in Alabama, she lives with her husband in New York City.
Helen Ellis on PowellsBooks.Blog
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