Welcome to Litsy!

While in places dated, I found this darkly comic, and a good just for fun read.

I think the Tates have #GroundsForDivorce #RedRoseSeptember

Even though I hated everyone in this, I didn‘t hate the book itself. Not one of Lurie‘s best, but even a second-rate Lurie is better than a lot of stuff. I appreciated the dramatization of the struggle with family planning prior to Roe v. Wade. Also, there is a scene that a post-MeToo reader will parse as a rape but the characters treat it like just the typical end of a bad date. 😬

I hate all the characters in this but I‘m still reading bc schadenfreude is real. 😂

Wow, a novel that takes on the practical issue of unwanted pregnancy before Roe v. Wade. Rough stuff but I‘m on board for it.

Alison Lurie never disappoints. Next ebook! ❤️

It's set in a time when coffee was made in a pot over a flame, abortions were illegal and everyone read their horoscope. Welcome to 1974 & "The War Between the Tates". It's about a family divorcing - the parents from each other, the kids from the parents & the parents from the kids. (No, they are not the same thing.) It is a finely observed novel about the manner & mode of family life & is a contemporaneous portrait of the aftermath of the 60's.

"That is the worst part about being a middle aged woman. You have already made your choices, taken the significant moral actions of your lifelong ago when you were inexperienced. Now you have more knowledge of yourself and the world; you are equipped to make choices, but there are none left to make."
Or as Virginia Wolfe said so sleekly said it "The sheets are stretched; the bed is narrow."
Love literature!

Can't wait to read this. I hated Franzen's "Freedom", but am thinking this is a more cogent, if traditional, taken on the same themes. Written in 1974. A pick so far. We'll see.