A Woman's Life1994

Turning the idea of celebrity biography inside out, Susan Cheever explores the heart and mind of her generation with this powerful true story of the life of an ordinary woman whose experiences as a wife, mother, lover, teacher, and friend are a fascinating prism for readers of any generation. At forty-five, Linda Green is a statistical norm: a working mother of two children who lives with her second husband in a Boston suburb. But no life is a mere statistic, and the story of Linda Green has the trajectory and the power of a novel. At the age of five, pretty Linda was her parents' princess, at sixteen she was a cheerleader, but by the time she was twenty she and her high-school-sweetheart husband were moving down an uncharted road marked the 1960s. How and why Linda moved from being the girl next door to starting a commune and experimenting with drugs and open marriage to being the controversial suburban mother and teacher she is now is the frame that holds this story together. But it's Cheever's talent for intimately, and honestly, describing the unique social, intellectual, and psychological pressures women like Linda confront that infuses this story with its harsh, eloquent beauty.