Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

Friendship, trials, and laughter through the decades. I laughed so much!

You will laugh and you will cry - I know I did. But mostly I cried when I knew the end was in sight. It was one of those books that you hated to turn the page because you knew it would bring you closer to the ending. AHEB is a great story about 5 woman who develop a deep friendship (and a book club!) through the years. The characters were well developed and true to life. These are people who may be your next door neighbor or the lady in line behind you at Walmart. No, it wasn't "deep" or overly filled with symbolism. Some call it "mind candy", but we all need a little candy for our minds now and then!

Good friends and good books---who could ask for anything more? Especially if you happen to throw in lots of good food featuring heavy doses of chocolate----and you have a fascinating neighborhood book club called Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons. Faith is a transplanted Southerner feeling out-of-place in the frozen wasteland of Minnesota when one night a power outage sends her outdoors to meet her neighbors in a snowball fight that will change her life. Years later, when a therapist asks her how she was able to hold things together for so long, she will reply "That's easy. I belong to a book club." For it is on that cold and snowy night that Faith and four of her neighbors conceive of a book club that will bind them for life and see them through their darkest traumas and most joyful events. Readers will be totally engrossed in the lives of these stay-at-home moms: Faith, who hides a past that shames her; Audrey, the proverbial sex kitten who can't hold her husband; Merit, the shy introvert who suffers physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her doctor husband; Slip, the antiwar activist who finds plenty to shout about during the Vietnam era; and Kari, the widowed elder of the group whose life takes on new meaning when an unexpected event gives her the child she has always longed for. From the sixties to the nineties you will follow these women and share their deep friendship, big laughs, and heart-breaking tears. The big bonus for book-lovers is that each chapter features the book title and author being discussed at the monthly meeting. Your interest will be piqued as you rediscover old favorites and may be inspired to read a few you missed along the way.Lorna Landvik has created unforgettable characters, strong women who discover amazing things about themselves as they adapt to changing times and changing lives. I heartily recommend this most enjoyable book and only wish my own neighborhood had a chapter of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons.

I've been waiting years for a book that rivaled "The Savings Graces" (by Patricia Gaffney) with the characters and how their lives and their stories are intertwined. This book is finally the one! This is an amazing story of five women who are neighbors in Minneapolis. They become friends and form a book club called Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons. It spans three decades of friendship, marriage, divorce, babies, grown children, secrets, growing up, you name it - it's in there. It flows effortlessly between the different women's perspectives and even provides a new list of books to check out! Each chapter begins with a book and the reason the host chose it for their book club. I found myself thinking of the neighborhood I grew up in, my friends, my Mom's friends, family friends, all of those bonds that form the fabric of our lives.It is a Must Read for any women who have close friendships. I can't wait for my Mom and my best friend to read it - they will both love it.

I enjoyed this book from beginning to end. Begins and ends in the present, however this book goes back in time and follows the lives of 5 women neighbors and their close friendship through the decades. They form a book club and every chapter centers around a book selection. It's only March but it will be one of my top reads for 2003 already!

Simply stated, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons is a pure reading delight from beginning to end. Okay, so the five female characters do tend to wander into stereotypical prototype land a bit at times and yes, you can usually spot their various plotlines coming a mile away, but so what! In Lorna Landvik's hands, they still manage to come to life and even start to feel like family as you travel with them through their first meeting in 1968 up to the present day and everything in between. I wouldn't be suprised to see "AHEB" book groups springing up around the country once word of mouth of this wonderful novel spreads.