The Bitch is Back: Older, Wiser, and (Getting) Happier (William Morrow, 2016)
It’s been more than a decade since The Bitch in the House spoke up loud and clear for a generation of young woman—so loud that the book hit #10 on the New York Times bestseller list and was published all over the world. Now, nine of those funny, smart, passionate contributors are back, joined by sixteen captivating new voices to share their ruminations from an older, stronger, and wiser perspective about love, sex, work, family, independence, beauty, health, and aging. Conceived and edited by Cathi Hanauer, a novelist who also has written for the New York Times, Elle, O, Real Simple, Glamour, and many other publications—and who, along with her husband, Daniel Jones, started the iconic New York Times “Modern Love” column—THE BITCH IS BACK also features such beloved writers and leaders as Ann Hood, Sandra Tsing Loh, Kate Christensen, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Pam Houston, Veronica Chambers, Sarah Crichton, Lizzie Skurnick Debora Spar, Jill Bialosky, and many more, in a collection deemed “thrilling and reassurring” and “mature and existential” by the New York Times Book Review; “sharp and lively” by Kirkus Reviews; “revelatory,” by Bookforum; and “fearless” and “armed with wisdom” by The Guardian (UK). 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.
Reviews below:
“The women in Bitch 2, as Hanauer calls it, 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 a man 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….Bitch 2 has a more mature and existential feel to it than Bitch 1….In the stronger pieces, which often pop with subversive wit, the anger of the previous book has been replaced by a graceful reckoning. —The New York Times Book Review
“[The contributors] all tell their stories, share their insights, provide wisdom, and offer encouragement with wit, compassion, and brutally frank honesty. 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. In doing so, Hanauer and company give voice to topics all too frequently hidden under a damaging cone of silence. —Booklist
"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
Nine of [Hanauer’s] original contributors, together with 16 new ones, this time report on “enlightened middle age” and what it has brought them, from wrinkles to a new confidence in the office, from divorce to wild affairs to enforced (and sometimes elective) celibacy. If it’s a gentler book than The Bitch in the House, anger having given way mostly to surprised acceptance, it’s also more revelatory. Given how our culture tends to treat us once we hit 45, only very rarely are we moved to be this open about how it feels. -The Guardian UK
"No platitudes and warmed-over feminist solidarity here, but real – and often hard-won — self-knowledge from a wide range of smart women looking back on particular defining moments of their lives with wit and candor.” —The National Book Review
"The writers are smart, engaging...compelling thinkers and storytellers.” —Elle magazine