In Every Woman's Life

by Alix Kates Shulman

An insightful story of three women that wittily portrays the pleasures and pitfalls of marriage, parenthood, and being female in middle-class America
After the turmoil of the feminist movements of the 1960s and '70s, three women are drawn together by family and friendship. Rosemary Streeter is a married mother of two who believes in the strength of family--even while having an affair. For Rosemary, "marriage is about family. It's about raising children. It's an economic arrangement. Passion has nothing to do with it, except maybe to get it started." Meanwhile, hard-nosed, glamorous, and successful journalist Nora Kennedy claims to enjoy the freedom of being unmarried and childless, but secretly fantasizes about living with her married boyfriend. Rosemary's teenage daughter, Daisy, struggles to acquire the wisdom of womanhood in the confusion of 1980s America. Rich with humor and compassion about the complexities of marriage and everyday life, In Every Woman's Life . . . offers a fresh perspective on the role of women in society and on the American family.

Genres: Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Alix attended public schools and planned to be a lawyer like her dad. But in college at Case Western Reserve University she was smitten by philosophy and upon graduation moved to New York City to study philosophy at Columbia grad school. After some years as an encyclopedia editor, she enrolled at New York University, where she took a degree in mathematics, and later, while raising two children, an MA in Humanities.

She became a civil rights activist in 1961 and a feminist activist in 1967, published her first book in 1970, and taught her first class in 1973--all lifelong pursuits that have found their way into her books.

Having explored in her novels the challenges of youth and midlife, in her memoirs she has probed the later stages in the ongoing drama of her generation of women, taking on the terrors and rewards of solitude, of her parents' final years, and of her late-life calling as caregiver to her beloved husband, with whom she lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Taffey Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is NOT the kind of novel I usually prefer to read at all. However, I did appreciate the witty exchanges and banter between some of the characters. I also like the clever way the Author demonstrates the differing lives of the two female friends in this novel; a proud, married adulteress and an independent, single career woman with a married lover.

Both women, despite these antics, are very successful at their respective professions. In my humble opinion, this Author is very talented & wrote a good novel or "good read", (pardon the pun). But truthfully, I just did not like the character, Rosemary, who seemed to treat marriage with disdain, and appeared only to appreciate marriage when she partook in affairs.

[Cws]

F Shu

[Ann]

This is one of the books I have read and reread over again.

[Clifford Wollum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woman's thoughts to love, marriage and the changing of times.