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A Woman's Life: The Story of an Ordinary American and Her Extraordinary Generation
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
- GenresFiction
Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 27, 2010
For this book Cheever extensively interviewed a woman she thought was representative of the Boomer generation and then told her story.
Summary: Perfect child and cheerleader, Linda Green grew up in an era when women expected men to take care of them and the ticket out of a family home was marriage. She became a hippie in the 1960s, lived in a commune, experimented with drugs and open marriage. Now Linda is remarried, teaches school, and leads a conventional middle class life in a suburb of Boston.
While there was a certain fascinating watching-a-train-wreck aspect to it (Linda lets everyone walk all over her), I have to say I really, really hated it. I thought Cheever's writing was poor and disorganized, but even worse were her completely unsubstantiated pronouncements on human nature, which rang annoyingly false to me. A little example:
p. 183 "Pregnancy is difficult for women but it is even more difficult for men. Men are often literal creatures, and pregnancy asks them to change the way they act and think on the basis of an abstract principle--the expected birth of a child."
Cheever randomly states this even after she started the paragraph by saying, "Stranger than the physical discomforts was Linda's sense of impending doom. She desperately wanted a child, but she knew that the child would change everything in ways she couldn't imagine. She felt like a passenger in a car headed for a cliff."
Aside from the fact that she presents no basis for her opinions stated as facts, and that she is incredibly negative about the whole thing, don't her descriptions describe a similar experience between the sexes? Doesn't Linda feel exactly the same as Cheever is saying a MAN would feel? She did stuff like this throughout, and it was really grating to me.
Summary: Perfect child and cheerleader, Linda Green grew up in an era when women expected men to take care of them and the ticket out of a family home was marriage. She became a hippie in the 1960s, lived in a commune, experimented with drugs and open marriage. Now Linda is remarried, teaches school, and leads a conventional middle class life in a suburb of Boston.
While there was a certain fascinating watching-a-train-wreck aspect to it (Linda lets everyone walk all over her), I have to say I really, really hated it. I thought Cheever's writing was poor and disorganized, but even worse were her completely unsubstantiated pronouncements on human nature, which rang annoyingly false to me. A little example:
p. 183 "Pregnancy is difficult for women but it is even more difficult for men. Men are often literal creatures, and pregnancy asks them to change the way they act and think on the basis of an abstract principle--the expected birth of a child."
Cheever randomly states this even after she started the paragraph by saying, "Stranger than the physical discomforts was Linda's sense of impending doom. She desperately wanted a child, but she knew that the child would change everything in ways she couldn't imagine. She felt like a passenger in a car headed for a cliff."
Aside from the fact that she presents no basis for her opinions stated as facts, and that she is incredibly negative about the whole thing, don't her descriptions describe a similar experience between the sexes? Doesn't Linda feel exactly the same as Cheever is saying a MAN would feel? She did stuff like this throughout, and it was really grating to me.
October 21, 2012
A hard book to rate in some ways. It's engaging and quite readable, but the whole premise of the book is flawed. "Linda" is chosen to represent an entire generation of baby-boomer women, supposedly she's "average." In truth she seems quite obviously a stand-in for Cheever herself. Cheever seems to be practicing psychotherapy without a license, and forcing her own views upon her subject. Sometimes she seems to scoff at the notion that Linda has found happiness, because Cheever isn't happy, so how could her meme?
Cheever's also not a social scientist--a lot if her assertions are plausible, some dubious, none particularly grounded by evidence beyond feminist theory.
One is granted license in being subjective about one's life, of course. Cheever really should have written about herself, since she often makes observations about how her life mirrored Linda's. I'm guessing her family put the nix on that, so she had to find an analogous woman whose anonymity she could protect.
What she should have done was emulate Tom Wolfe's style of writing and kept herself entirely out of the story. Cheever seems to embody the narcissism of the baby boomers--the subtitle of this book is "The Story of an Ordinary American and Her Extraordinary Generation"--so such self-effacement probably never occurred to her.
Cheever's also not a social scientist--a lot if her assertions are plausible, some dubious, none particularly grounded by evidence beyond feminist theory.
One is granted license in being subjective about one's life, of course. Cheever really should have written about herself, since she often makes observations about how her life mirrored Linda's. I'm guessing her family put the nix on that, so she had to find an analogous woman whose anonymity she could protect.
What she should have done was emulate Tom Wolfe's style of writing and kept herself entirely out of the story. Cheever seems to embody the narcissism of the baby boomers--the subtitle of this book is "The Story of an Ordinary American and Her Extraordinary Generation"--so such self-effacement probably never occurred to her.
October 25, 2019
A solid, in depth read about a woman’s life chosen by the author to represent the experiences of women of the baby boomer era. The woman (Linda) is only a few years older than me tho she made many choices that I did not. (like getting married very young and then divorcing) The author psycho-analyses her throughout the book. I very much enjoyed reading how she navigated her life through the many ups and downs that we all experience.
April 11, 2010
Readable, but not particularly engaging. It felt like Susan Cheever glommed onto the details of her chosen (although a volunteer, too) subject’s life but didn’t do much with them. Or, at least not enough to justify the woman’s trust the book would treat her life details carefully and do no harm. The book ends on a doubtful note as to the subject’s ability to be happy in any significant or lasting way. Throughout the book Ms. Cheever also steps annoyingly forward with asides about her own experiences – like why she named her children as she did – that don’t add anything to the story, rather than letting her subject’s ideas or actions speak for themselves.
June 13, 2011
Cheever logs a woman's life who was born in 1947. It is a true saga of the evolution of the life of many women in the United States. I was born in 1933 so my story would start before hers when I was made to believe that menstruation limited not only the physical abilties but psychologically and definitely emotionally. I could write a humorous tale of my life in a "man's world" but then life would be boring if it weren't humorous. I skipped a lot of the 'steps' of the heroine in this book - many of them very happily. It was a good read. Life is good!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews