Woman DestroyedBook Description
These three long stories draw us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises. In the title story, the heroine's serenity is shattered when she learns that her husband is having an affair. In "The Age of Discretion," a successful, happily married professor finds herself increasingly distressed by her son's absorption in his young wife and her worldly values. In "The Monologue," a rich, spoiled woman, home alone on New Year's Eve, pours out a lifetime's rage and frustration in a harrowing diatribe. Enthralling as fiction, suffused with de Beauvoir's remarkable insights into women, The Woman Destroyed gives us a legendary writer at her best.
Basically, The Monologue: is the confusing diatribe of a spoiled rich woman on-the-edge -- with a lot of mental-baggage that needs unpacking -- alone [by design] in her apartment on New Year's Eve -- the holiday is irrelevant, it could be any evening --...while everyone else is out having fun. Her past, present and future are all fair game in this twisted ride with many turns and dead ends -- complete stops and bazaar imaginings. She blames everyone and no one for her current situation. Her daughter has committed suicide, her young son has been taken from her via divorce. It's filthy, it's clean. --Katharena Eiermann, 2006
A Woman Destroyed: How dumb (or in denial) can a woman be? Her husband has been having affairs with other women, on and off, for the past 10 years -- putting in all that overtime at work. All her friends know, her grown daughters know, the people her (highly-successful) husband works with know. The woman's husband finally tells her that he stopped loving her 10 years prior, but still likes her, wants her to have [his] dinner on the table in the evening, wants his laundry done -- that is why he kept living with her. He starts to tear the world she built around him (the only world she has allowed herself to know) down...feeding her imagination with well-placed destructive seeds. All his poisonous barbs on her fragile ego are calculated and exact. He knows what he wants, he wants her to give it to him -- her to do the dirty work -- her to cause their break-up. Huh? This is a very good story. Exquisitely written, realistic, existential, stays on track. --Katharena Eiermann, 2006
The Age of Discretion: Classic "but, that's not the way your Father and I raised you..." story, or, "a little too much time on my hands...so, let me dissect your life and all the reasons why". Heart warming, but not brilliant. --Katharena Eiermann, 2006
