To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife » (Unabridged; 5.75 hours on 5 CDs)

Caitlin Flanagan's essays have appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband their sons.

What's so funny about the weddings, nannies, overscheduled children, sex (or the lack thereof), the cult of the “domestic goddess” and its manias for home decorating and gourmet cooking, and the endless tension between working moms and stay-at-home moms? Caitlin Flanagan knows, and she offers it up in a fresh, witheringly funny take on women’s lives today. Part social history, part social commentary, part personal account of the author’s own relationship with her mother and her children, TO HELL WITH ALL THAT is about the things that interest Flanagan the most: women and children, households and marriages. Presented as a series of essays, it follows the natural course of women’s lives. Without offering a prescription for happiness, it defines where Flanagan wants to be: in a world where a woman is depended on, and considered irreplaceable, by people who love her.

Original material © 2006 Caitlin Flanagan. Recorded by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company (Inc.).

The New York Times - Pamela Paul

At heart, To Hell With All That is an attempt to understand, commemorate and legitimize her mother's life as a housewife and nurse, two underappreciated female vocations. She opens her book in the emptiness of her recently dead and dearly loved mother's home and closes with the difficulty she has facing cancer without the comfort of a mother's presence. If it seems as if Flanagan wants to turn back the clock to an era of capable and solicitous homemakers, you can understand why.

Preface     xiii
The Virgin Bride     3
The Wifely Duty     23
Housewife Confidential     45
A Necessary Person     73
That's My Woman     99
Executive Child     143
Drudges and Celebrities: The New Housekeeping     165
Clutter Warriors     189
To Hell with All That     203
My Life without You     227
Acknowledgments     241
Reading Group Guide     247