Diary Of A Mad Housewife

?What I really am, and have been since midsummer is paralyzed,? writes Bettina Balser, summing up her state of mind. ?What I am is paranoid as a coot. What I am at times so depresses me I can?t talk, so low I have to lock myself in the bathroom and run all the faucets to cover the sound of my crying. . . And I end up either having to take a pill or a quick sneaky shot of vodka?it depends which is available. . . .? Tina records in her diary the conditions of her everyday life as a housewife in New York City, with her nagging, climber of a husband Jonathan, and her two girls, aged nine and seven, who so completely take after him that Tina hardly recognizes them as her own. They live in a cavernous apartment on Central Park West that she can barely keep in order. As a form of therapy, Tina begins a secret diary. The self-awareness she gains propels her into a new set of experiences, most notably, an extra-marital affair. She discovers that this man is as hateful as her husband, but she has good sex for the first time since her early married days, and she gets out of the house an afternoon every week. This mordant, hysterically entertaining novel casts a cool eye on middle-class mores, the so-called liberation of the 1960s, and the coping mechanisms that often failed women who were called housewives. Published originally in 1967, Diary of a Mad Housewife was made into a major Hollywood movie in 1970 starring Carrie Snodgrass and Richard Benjamin.