46 pages • 1 hour read
Lorna LandvikAngry Housewives Eating Bon Bons
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “1968-1970”
Prologue Summary: September 1998 – Faith
Faith recounts the times she has had her life saved, and reflects that she’ll never want a death like her mother’s. The women with her in this hospital room have saved her life more times than she can count. They include big-hearted Audrey, who long ago told Faith to believe in herself and stop trying to be perfect; Kari, the widow who has remained optimistic through everything; Slip, the small dynamo; and Merit. They sing and discuss the next selection for their book club, and the nurse mistakes them for sisters because they get along so well.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Members”
The Fuller Brush salesman comes to Freesia Court, a pretty neighborhood near Minnehaha Creek, and gets a hostile reception during a cold snap in March. Faith Owens is packing a suitcase for her husband, a pilot, who will be flying out again. Audrey Forrest is enjoying a post-coital glow and letting her boys fight. Merit Iverson, who has the face of an angel, is nervously smoking and asking her husband, a doctor, if it will hurt the baby.
Marjorie McMahon is nicknamed Slip because she is small. She comes outside to help her neighbor, Kari, dislodge an icicle. Kari’s husband Bjorn died five years earlier. She wishes she’d had a baby but nurtures her nieces and nephews, including her niece Mary Jo. Slip, a peace activist, is upset because her brother Fred is talking about enlisting in the army. Faith, home alone with her small twins, is alarmed when the power goes out. When she sees people outside having a snowball fight, she goes out to join them. It is Audrey, Merit, Slip, and Kari. After they play, Faith invites them over to her house and gets to know them.
Faith guesses Audrey comes from money, and Merit is as beautiful as a doll. Kari tells a story about her mother’s book club, and Slip says they should start one. Faith writes a letter to her mother Primrose, which she ends with “Sorry.” She recalls her fractious upbringing with her mother, who abused alcohol. When she went to college, Faith reinvented herself and has been careful not to reveal anything about her past.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “June 1968 – Merit”
The club reads Hotel by Arthur Hailey.
Eric, Merit’s husband, hits her when she says she wants to join a book club. She feels sick. Shocked that he hit her, Eric permits Merit to join the book club, and she recommends Hotel.
Merit grew up with religious parents. Her father, a pastor, stopped speaking to her when she decided to move to Minneapolis. Attending church on Christmas Eve, she met Eric, who invited her home to meet his parents. Merit thought they were a marvelous family and envied their lives. After they married, however, Eric became insulting and controlling. Though he is not consistently cruel, he will often force himself on her. Though she knows he is at fault and that he is not behaving due to something she did, Merit starts acting in ways she hopes will please him: doing her hair in a French roll like his mother wears, dressing in clothes he picked out, doing everything the way he wants her to. The idea of leaving her marriage terrifies her.
Merit is nervous about hosting the book club, worried that the other women will criticize her, and is astonished that the others can disagree without it turning into a fight. Merit has contractions, and the women take her to the hospital only to find out that she is experiencing false labor.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “July 1968 – Slip”
The club reads Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver.
Slip, who has been an activist since youth, is upset by the assassination of Robert Kennedy. She is short-tempered with her daughter, Flannery, who hides in her treehouse. Slip goes out to make peace and ends up hiding out in the treehouse while Flannery plays. Faith joins her in the treehouse. Slip cries about the Vietnam War, all the assassinations, and whatever happened to the Summer of Love. The women giggle as they watch Audrey sunbathe topless.
Audrey spots them and climbs the treehouse to join them. They see their neighborhood nemesis, do-gooder Leslie Trottman. All the women flash her, then laugh. Faith writes to her mother about the stories she’s made up about her family, about how her father was a doctor instead of abandoning her at birth. Her husband, Wade, is protective of her, and Faith wants to keep his good opinion. Again, she signs the letter “Sorry.”
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “August 1968 – Kari”
The club reads Middlemarch by George Eliot.
Merit is nursing her new daughter, Reni, and the women discuss nursing their children. Audrey and Slip are both pregnant. Merit stood up to her husband about nursing their daughter and thought he looked ready to hit her again. Kari thinks about how she too might be a mother soon but doesn’t tell the others yet.
Kari flies out to San Francisco to visit her niece, Mary Jo, who is in college. Mary Jo looks ill and takes Kari to visit a hippie lawyer, Larry. Mary Jo confesses that she had a baby after a short affair and that the father went back to Africa. Mary Jo hopes that Kari will raise the child, but doesn’t want anyone else in the family to know. Kari wonders how she will keep this secret from her brother, but is also thrilled at the idea. They go to meet the baby, whom Kari names Julia, after her grandmother.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 4 Analysis
The prologue foreshadows the novel’s conclusion and the endpoint of the women’s journeys. It also introduces all five of the women who will be the book’s protagonists, as well as Grant. The prologue doesn’t reveal which of the women is sick or injured, creating suspense around the question of why they are in the hospital: This gives the reader something to read toward. The women will often alternate as the focus of different chapters, and the prologue begins with Faith’s point of view. This is a natural choice, as it is Faith’s move to the neighborhood that brings the five women together.
Chapter 1 introduces the key characters as “the members,” alluding to their membership in the book club. It is told in an omniscient or Godlike perspective, shifting from one woman to another as each is introduced. An omniscient perspective is akin to a movie camera that moves from character to character, allowing an overview of the ensemble cast.
As the chapters commence, Audrey, Slip, and Faith typically narrate their chapters in the first-person, referring to themselves as “I,” while the chapters centering on Merit and Kari are typically narrated in the third person, where Merit and Kari are referred to as “she.” Regardless, the focus is on one particular character and her struggles. Switches among narrators and points of view provide a window inside the various characters’ heads and allow a different glimpse into their challenge or secret.
The women are all foils of each other. Slip is compact and fiery, easily upset, and needs action to relieve her feelings. Audrey is full-bodied and sensual; she loves food, alcohol, and sex. Kari, a widow who has been denied children, has already dealt with heartbreak. Merit and Faith are foils in that both hide a painful secret beneath a peaceful surface. Merit is accustomed to people not looking beyond her beauty, and Faith is lying about her past. All of the characters harbor their own secrets. This creates tension throughout the narrative. It invites the question of what can be shared, and what must be kept hidden, in order for a relationship to succeed and a friendship to survive.
The novel juxtaposes contrasting emotions and elements, beginning with the prologue. Though the women are in a hospital room, they are laughing. The characters often experience both joy and sorrow. For example, Kari, after not being able to have children, having an agency renege on her first adoption, and losing her husband, experiences the elation of raising her own child. Motherhood, indeed, emerges as a key focus in the novel, with all four women navigating what it means to be a parent.
While all the women adore motherhood, they have different experiences with marriage. Kari was happily married and still grieves the loss of her husband. Faith and Slip have devoted husbands who care about their well-being. Audrey’s husband seems self-absorbed, and Merit’s husband physically and emotionally abuses her. Merit, in keeping this abuse a secret, is motivated by shame, much as Faith is when keeping her past a secret. Kari is also bound by secrecy, though hers is externally imposed by her niece. The women’s varied secrets drive the plot and create conflict. While the women share so much, there are also parts of their lives that the others cannot see into.
