Review: American Housewife by Helen Ellis

American Housewife

by Helen Ellis

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 208

Format: audiobook

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Meet the women of American Housewife: they wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These twelve irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam, from the gallery opening of a tinfoil artist to the fitting room of a legendary lingerie shop. 


Kritters Thoughts:  I don't listen to that many audio books, but I thought this was the perfect one to do, with a collection of short stories I could listen to one and "put the book down" and come back to it later when I was cleaning the house or driving somewhere.

I had heard about this book before I listened and knew that it was a fun collection about different housewives and experiences and I completely agree with that depiction.  I liked that the stories had variations in length.  I liked that there were short itty bitty ones and then there were some that had some pages to it.  

In all short story collections there are some that stand out and some that take a back seat and this one was that.  There were some stories that literally made me laugh out loud and stop what I was doing to listen and others that were just ok.  The ones that were just ok didn't affect my reading, we can't all like everything.  What stories I love could be stories that you dislike and vice versa.  

Being a book nerd the one story that stood out was the one about bookclubs.  I belong to two book clubs and it was hilarious how she described the people and the quirks and the dynamics, that one was absolutely my favorite and I wouldn't have minded if that one had been longer!

I had never read Helen Ellis before and I looked at her backlist and nothing seemed similar to this, have you read anything by her?  If I liked this, what should I try next?


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Netgalley.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.