Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket
Stories
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Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket
Narrated by:
Hillary Huber
Buy Now for £10.69
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Narrated by:
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Hillary Huber
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By:
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Hilma Wolitzer
A TIME 'New Books You Should Read'
A People magazine 'Book of the Week'
A New York Times Editors' Choice
With a foreword by Elizabeth Strout
‘Electric: with wit, with rage, with grief, with the kind of prose that makes you both laugh and thrill to the darker, spikier emotions just barely visible under the bright surface. What a wonderful collection of stories’ Lauren Groff
Another day! And then another and another and another. It seemed as if it would all go on forever in that exquisitely boring and beautiful way. But of course it wouldn’t; everyone knows that.
In this collection, Hilma Wolitzer invites us inside the private world of domestic bliss, seen mostly through the lens of Paulie and Howard’s gloriously ordinary marriage.
From hasty weddings to meddlesome neighbours, ex-wives who just won’t leave, to sleepless nights spent worrying about unanswered chainmail, Wolitzer captures the tensions, contradictions and unexpected detours of daily life with wit, candour and an acutely observant eye.
Including stories first published in magazines in the 1960s and 1970s – alongside new writing from Wolitzer, now in her nineties – Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket reintroduces a beloved writer to be embraced by a new generation of readers.
‘A fascinating time capsule of womanhood, marriage and motherhood over the last century … A fabulous book’ Emma Straub
‘Immensely gratifying, poignant, funny … Breathtaking’ Elizabeth Strout, from the foreword©2021 Hilma Wolitzer (P)2021 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic reviews
Short stories that pack a pithy poignant punch by a 91-year-old mistress of the craft … From the first page, dialogue and descriptions crackle through the quotidian and Hilma’s piquant prose illuminates scenes both prosaic and profound
Wolitzer’s vision of the world, for all its sorrow, is often hilarious and always compassionate.
[Wolitzer’s writing] shines a light on the extraordinary and magical in seemingly ordinary, every day lives … Wolitzer is sure to find many new fans with this collection
Wolitzer is a genius of the short story … Wolitzer is above all an observer, and she has a wonderful eye: compassionate, slightly jaundiced, erotic, urbane and often very funny
Wolitzer is a champ at the closely observed, droll novel of manners.
The stories, full of references to Formica counters and Jell-O moulds, are riven with the stresses of parenting and marriage, and are incredibly funny … Her stories are disarmingly playful, but they also explore such subjects as maternal ambivalence and female desire in a way that feels radical even today
Oh, how I loved these stories! I've been a fan of Hilma Wolitzer since my teens and this collection offers everything I adore about her novels: each story dazzles with an unflinching portrayal of a woman at a pivotal moment in her life (Joanna Rakoff, author of MY SALINGER YEAR)
Wit, wisdom and warmth form the foundation of this sparkling collection. Wolitzer is a natural-born storyteller whose rigour, attention and generosity create miracles on each and every page (Tayari Jones)
Hilma Wolitzer’s skill is to capture what on the surface seems like ordinary lives, but uncovering the extraordinary that lies underneath
Like its author, the stories in Today A Woman Went Mad shine as brightly, cut as deeply and entertain as deliciously as if they’d been written today
Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket is electric: with wit, with rage, with grief, with the kind of prose that makes you both laugh and thrill to the darker, spikier emotions just barely visible under the bright surface. What a wonderful collection of stories (Lauren Groff)
Wolitzer is especially strong on wise – and wisecracking – women, even in the harrowing tale of a meltdown in a supermarket ... You’ll laugh till you weep
Written over more than half a century, these thirteen stories circle themes such as love, insomnia and motherhood … [The collection is] beady-eyed and often humorous, its pages packed with details that reveal as much as entire novels
[Wolitzer] shows us the ever-shifting alliances of family life and ways in which love can both change and endure.
There are equal amounts of drollery and despair in these wonderful stories … Wolitzer’s take is fresh and funny and finely tuned to the carefree moments that lighten the emotional load … It’s so beautifully done, sly and spry, the perfect mixture of funny and sad
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