DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE

by Sue Kaufman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 1967

Diary, Sue Kaufman's most ambitious and most successful book to date, is the ""Account"" she keeps over a period of about six months and it's a sophisticated, intense, frayed and wholly involving affair. Chiefly because Miss Kaufman's eye for all those consequential inconsequentials has the irreversible precision of a camera. This then is a re-run of Tina's life with Jonathan from the time (ten years or so) when he was such a promising New Frontier type liberal to now when he's all ""pink and puffy""--a ""Wonder in Worsted, Marvel in Madras, Dirge in Serge""--looking like Madison Avenue and living high off Wall Street. But Tina hasn't changed and Jonathan finds her touchy, messy and ready to go back to ""Popkin,"" her psychiatrist. Actually she is either pretty depressed or all psyched up--unable to cope with his New People and ""Mad Fun Places"" and the $150 dress she doesn't want to buy and his gourmet notions and a dismal Party they give and the laundry and a long siege with a virus and his Christmas shopping and all her identities: she's Alice the Goon or, after a ""straight sex thing"" with a playwright, she's Tina Macbeth, and always the Victim. An appealing one, so that this housewife, and her rather drastic domestic scene, should connect in just the way that it's projected--with immediacy and conviction.

Pub Date: May 19, 1967

ISBN: 1560256877

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1967

Categories: FICTION