Read Online Book American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis

A sharp, funny, delightfully unhinged collection of stories set in the dark world of domesticity,American Housewife features murderous ladies who lunch, celebrity treasure hunters, and the best bra fitter south of the Mason Dixon line.

Meet the women of American Housewife: they wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These twelve irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam, from the gallery opening of a tinfoil artist to the fitting room of a legendary lingerie shop. Vicious, fresh, and nutty as a poisoned Goo Goo Cluster, American Housewifeis an uproarious, pointed commentary on womanhood. Read Online Book American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis Full Free

Review :

"Macabre does not even begin to describe this collection steeped in the Southern Gothic tradition. Flannery O'Connor would turn green with equal parts sick and envy.... [T]his dark, deadpan and truly inventive collection is one you'll wish to relish long after its sell-by date."
—Patricia Park, The New York Times Book Review 

“Satirical humor as twisted as screw-top bottles — and more effervescent than the stuff that pours out of them… American Housewife is a better cure for winter blahs than hot chocolate… The opening story captures her frisky, subversive take on domesticity…  Ellis's [one-liners] are outrageously good… ‘What I Do All Day’ is a three-page tour-de-force, boasting as many dazzlers as a wealthy Upper East Side matron's jewelry box… Amid the furious activity, Ellis works her story to a touching punchline you never saw coming. This is shock and awww writing… Ellis is a master of the unhinged monologue, delivered by narrators whose conventional, seemingly benign, honeyed patter gradually reveals the disturbing demon within.”
—Heller McAlpin, NPR 

“The 12 compact tales are delightfully dark and leave readers always rooting for the housewife, no matter how twisted her plots…. With punchy writing and unique conundrums, American Housewife can be devoured in a sitting. Resist. The tales are best consumed like the pinot grigio some of these housewives enjoy — daily.”
—Christina Ledbetter, The Washington Post 

“Ms. Ellis, 45, calls herself a housewife. But that only begins to describe her. She is also a shrewd poker player who regularly competes in high-stakes tournaments, and the author of a forthcoming story collection, American Housewife, that focuses a dark and humorous lens on the domestic… The stories are addictive and full of pitch-perfect observations like, ‘the only thing with less character than Chardonnay is wainscoting’ and ‘Delores was as fertile as a Duggar.’ They are populated by, among others, neighbors in a co-op whose fight over decorating turns deadly; women in a book club trying to seduce a new member into carrying their babies; and a chilling series of dead doormen.” 
—J. Courtney Sullivan, The New York Times
“Darkly comic stories about, and for, ‘grown-ass’ ladies, featuring scary book clubs, life-changing bra fittings and instructions on matrimony, like ‘Forget thongs.’ LMAO.”
—People 
“Written in short and even shorter stories, Ellis structures her chapters as how-tos, lists, emails and some straight narrative. The book captures — and warmly lampoons — the scattered nature of modern life. The tales are also catchy, smart and very, very funny….The housewives in her collection share Ellis’s wry sensibility. But as comical as they are — and they are very — these women also have a sly depth. What Ellis has done with her smart satire is very difficult: She’s poking fun but not making fun of her characters. In fact, they are very likable.”
—Julie Klam, The Washington Post 
"The funniest short story collection of 2016… Ellis writes like she talks, and the results are as effervescent and intoxicating as champagne punch.”
—Megan Labrise, Kirkus 

“Delightful in its originality and eerie, almost demented, humor… Ellis’s stories start in a place that’s quite familiar—the domestic sphere of New York City’s ritzy Upper East Side, where the author also resides—and end in a place that’s decidedly not. Her characters are stealthily complex, their perfectly composed, well-maintained exteriors the ideal cover for inner lives that seethe with pathos and ambition.”
—Julia Felsenthal, Vogue.com

“The perfect cocktail of Amy Sedaris's wacky wit and Margaret Atwood's insight, Ellis's prose is both searingly funny and emotionally sound… Pithy, witty, and biting, a combination that makes Ellis's writing delicious… The women in these stories are alone in their homes all day, and in that they possess a unique power, command over a confined kingdom.”
—Claire Luchette, Elle.com
 
“The first line of Helen Ellis' book of short stories is a kind of call to arms for the American housewife. Quote, ‘inspired by Beyonce, I stallion walk to the toaster.’ Ellis is a self-described housewife. She's the kind of Southern lady that deals a mean hand of cards and once played at the World Series of Poker.”
— Rachel Martin, NPR “Morning Edition” 

“Crackle[s] with domestically ambivalent characters: the modern day Betty Drapers in Helen Ellis’s short story collection, American Housewife, whose tensions over wainscoting and book clubs escalate into near-farce.” 
–Vogue 

“Ellis’s 12 short stories about women under pressure are archly, acerbically, even surreally hilarious. By extracting elements from the southern gothic tradition, Shirley Jackson, and Margaret Atwood, Ellis has forged her own molten, mind-twisting storytelling mode. Her pacing is swift and eviscerating, and her characters’ rage and hunger for revenge are off the charts… Perfectly crafted… A breath-halting balance of slashing absurdist humor and rich and authentic emotional sensitivity… With monstrous children and cats, hopeless husbands, and covertly dangerous women, Ellis takes down the entire housewife concept with a sniper’s precision. These are delectably revved up, marauding, sometimes macabre tales of ruined marriages, illness, infertility, crass commercialism (literary product placement), desperation, ghosts, even murder, featuring women of shrewd calculation, secret sorrows, and deep sympathy."
— Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)


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