The Bitch Is Back: Older, Wiser, and (Getting) Happier

by Cathi Hanauer

Overview

More than a decade after the New York Times bestselling anthology The Bitch in the House spoke up loud and clear for a generation of young woman, nine of the original contributors are back—along with sixteen captivating new voices—sharing their ruminations from an older, stronger, and wiser perspective about love, sex, work, family, independence, body-image, health, and aging: the critical flash points of women’s lives today.

"Born out of anger," the essays in The Bitch in the House chronicled the face of womanhood at the beginning of a new millennium. Now those funny, smart, passionate contributors—today less bitter and resentful, and more confident, competent, and content—capture the spirit of postfeminism in this equally provocative, illuminating, and compelling companion anthology.

Having aged into their forties, fifties, and sixties, these "bitches"—bestselling authors, renowned journalists, and critically acclaimed novelists—are back . . . and better than ever. In The Bitch Is Back, Cathi Hanauer, Kate Christensen, Sarah Crichton, Debora Spar, Ann Hood, Veronica Chambers, and nineteen other women offer unique views on womanhood and feminism today. Some of the "original bitches" (OBs) revisit their earlier essays to reflect on their previous selves. All reveal how their lives have changed in the intervening years—whether they stayed coupled, left marriages, or had affairs; developed cancer or other physical challenges; coped with partners who strayed, died, or remained faithful; became full-time wage earners or homemakers; opened up their marriages; remained childless or became parents; or experienced other meaningful life transitions.

As a "new wave" of feminists begins to take center stage, this powerful, timely collection sheds a much-needed light on both past and present, offering understanding, compassion, and wisdom for modern women’s lives, all the while pointing toward the exciting possibilities of tomorrow.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062389527
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/12/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Cathi Hanauer is the author of three novels—My Sister’s Bones, Sweet Ruin, and Gone—and is the editor of the New York Times bestselling essay collection The Bitch in the House. A former columnist for Glamour, Mademoiselle, and Seventeen, she has written for The New York Times, Elle, Self, Real Simple, and other magazines. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband, New York Times “Modern Love” editor Daniel Jones, and their daughter and son.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

1 Me, Myself, and My Midlife Choices: My Way or the Highway 1

Five Crucial Things the Fifty-Three-Year-Old Bitch Knows That the Thirty-Nine-Year-Old Bitch Didn't (Yet) Pam Houston 3

Vagina Notwithstanding Jennifer Fianey Boylan 15

Gone Girl: What I (Don't) Own My Mother Anna March 25

Wrinkles in Time. Or Not Debora L. Spar 37

What's Love Got to Do with It: I'm Havin' My Baby Lizzie Skurnick 49

The "Other Woman"-Then and Now Kerry Herlihy 63

Dirty Work Kathy Thomas Cathi Hanauer 75

2 Sex, Lies, and Happy(ish) Endings: Because this Ain't Disney, Dolls. It's Life 89

The Coming of Age: Sex 102 Sarah Crichton 91

Still in the Heart Hazel McClay 105

My Filthy Little Heart: Love It? Or Lose It? Claire Johnson 117

Once a Week: Take It or Take It Grace O'Malley 129

Fifty Shades of Free Robin Rinaldi 143

My War with Sex Lynn Darling 153

3 To Hell and to Hold 165

Her Life. My Life: Two Women, Two Worlds Erin White 167

Jason, Me, and Jesus: The Other Guy in Our Relationship Veronica Chambers 179

Trading Places: We both wanted to stay home. He won. But so did I Julianna Baggott 191

Beyond the Myth of Co-Parenting: What We Lost-and Gained-by Abandoning Equality Hope Edelman 203

Now There Were Two Jill Bialosky 217

Living Alone: A Fantasy Sandra Tsing Lolt 227

4 Starting Over 241

Second Time Around: Letting Go of Convention (and Listening to My Mother) Kate Christensen 243

What was in It for ME: Saying Yes, Saying No, Leaning In, Leaning Out Rabia Hussain 257

Stepping Off the Scale Ann Hood 271

Getting It Right the Third Time. Or Wrong. You Tell Me Karen Karbo 283

Jes Susanna Sonnenberg 297

A New Life Under the Ladder Cynthia King 309

Contributors 323

Acknowledgments 331

Reader's Guide Discussion Questions 333

Editorial Reviews

[A]t once thrilling and reassuring. . . . [T]he anger of the previous book has been replaced by a graceful reckoning and the welcome realization that if we’re trapped at all, it’s only within the confines of certain realities.” — New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

[A]t once thrilling and reassuring. . . . [T]he anger of the previous book has been replaced by a graceful reckoning and the welcome realization that if we’re trapped at all, it’s only within the confines of certain realities.

New York Times Book Review

The women in The Bitch Is Back…grapple with companionship, widowhood, infidelity (including their own), appearance, cancer, their pasts, their parents, empty nests and finding love a second or third time, sometimes with men a decade or two younger. They talk about shame and loss, tolerance and compromise, their insecurities as well as their hypocrisy. In other words, they talk about the hard stuff, the gritty stuff, the stuff you aren't likely to find on their Facebook pages. And that's exactly what makes this collection at once thrilling and reassuring. It's the discomfort of the topics that provides comfort, a sense that however knotty our lives have turned out, they're far more normal than we think.

The New York Times Book Review - Lori Gottlieb

Like an all-night gab session with one’s best friend, these essays shed sincere and searing light on subjects that are often hard for women to face. . . . Hanauer and company give voice to topics all too frequently hidden under a damaging cone of silence.

Booklist

09/01/2016
In this sequel to her best-selling anthology The Bitch in the House, Hanauer brings together nine returning contributors along with 16 new voices to check in with her cohort of women experiencing midlife. The first collection focused on the anger and unhappiness of women struggling to balance professional careers with marriage and family life; this second book explores the lives of women who made significant changes in their lives. The results are mixed. Featured writers are overwhelmingly straight, white women with professional identities offset by a smattering of working-class and nonwhite perspectives, a lone woman with a cis gender female partner, and one trans woman's reflections. Several essays turn on the strength of the author's life partnership, but relationship tension and sexual dissatisfaction predominate. Many of the authors endured years of angry disappointment in themselves and their partners before making often-desperate change. Strikingly absent is critique of the structural forces and cultural expectations that continue to warp our individual experiences of marriage, parenting, and sexuality. VERDICT Readers struggling with unhappiness as wives and mothers may find solace in these stories; those seeking broader political or socialized solutions should look elsewhere. [See Prepub Alert, 3/14/16.]—Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc. Lib., Boston

Library Journal

2016-08-09
Successful women writers reflect on being mature and female in early-21st-century America.In this sequel to The Bitch in the House (2002), novelist/journalist Hanauer (Gone, 2012, etc.) gathers essays by nine original Bitch contributors and by such writers as Jennifer Finney Boylan, Robin Rinaldi, Sandra Tsing Loh, and Kate Christensen. The book is divided into four sections and begins with musings on lifestyle choices. Original contributor Pam Houston begins the anthology by reflecting on lessons she has learned about herself—for example, how her need for alone time trumps any need for a relationship—since writing her first Bitch essay. Transgender writer Boylan uses her move to a new job in New York as an opportunity to meditate on the upheaval that took place when she first came out. Sexual expression at midlife is the subject of the second section. Writers Robin Rinaldi and Sara Crichton write about the liberating sexual rebirths they experienced after ages 40 and 55, and Grace O’Malley discusses the unexpected joys of weekly scheduled sex with her husband of many decades. In the third section, women tell stories of the tribulations of married life. Erin White discusses how she and her wife “were the very opposite of radical” in the problems they faced and overcame as spouses, while Loh reflects on the rocky road to sharing a less-than-perfect life with her “lovable, getting-on-in-years” boyfriend. The final section deals with different kinds of starting over. For Susan Sonnenberg, a new life meant taking a chance on “the impulsive and rash and glorious" and saying “yes” to a second husband. But for Cynthia Kling, it meant a volunteer job teaching prison inmates that taught her lessons in “what really matters in life.” Sharp and lively, these essays offer insight not only into individual writers, but an entire generation of women coming to terms with the possibilities and limitations of their lives as older females. A provocative collection about “what happens later, after those frantic, demanding, exhausting years with work and very young kids and, sometimes, not enough money.

Kirkus Reviews