Status Updates From In the Flesh

Love this book. Where have you been all my life, Hilma Wolitzer? I have a new favorite author!

I first read Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket and was hooked.

Hilma’s protagonists are wry, humorous, poignant and right on the money. This book is no exception.

I highly recommend this book and the supermarket one!

OMG - I have a new favorite author and I can’t believe her books were published over 30 years ago. She has an amazing ‘voice’ and her observations and intrusive thoughts are often poignant and humorous but always fresh and spot on.

This is my second book by Hilma- the first was Today a Woman went Mad in the Supermarket - and I was hooked.

I highly recommend this author.

Elation and depression, they can both burn you up in a flame of feeling.

Maybe sometimes you have to open your mind to other possibilities outside yourself.

Confession: When you came for the children last Sunday, I looked through the window. When I saw you cutting across 108th just like old times, I wanted to drop a water bomb on your head. On Valentine's Day, I wanted to send you a dripping calf's heart.
What do you want me to do with all that junk you've left here? This isn't a warehouse.

"If you go, don't ever come back!" I hissed, but he was already down the hallway, hustling off to his new life, and the urgency of his footsteps broke my heart."

I had a dog when I was a child. When it was a few years old, I realized with horror I had established an irrevocable relationship with it which could only end in death.

I looked at Howard, who was asleep, and I could see his eyes moving under those thin lids as he followed his dreams.

If she was outspoken sometimes, it was because she believed it was in the service of Truth.

Now I was delirious with domesticity. I was like Sherry's mother, my soul sparkling with silver polish, my pride stiffened with laundry starch. Everything here spoke of stability and trust.

Reducing us to girlish dependence, Dr. Marvin Kramer called us by our first names. We called him Dr. Kramer.

What if I could never write again after this? Fabled punishment for happiness; one pleasure in exchange for another.