Expensive Habits

by Maureen Howard

Recent American social and political history is illuminated in an account of the life of writer Maggie Flood, whose two marriages and career launched her into the rarefied worlds of politics, the arts, and popular culture.

Genres: Fiction

1 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Maureen Howard is the author of seven novels, including Grace Abounding, Expensive Habits, and Natural History, all of which were nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. 'Facts of Life' is an award-winning autobiography. She is a 1952 Smith College alumnae and has taught at a number of American universities, including Columbia, Princeton, Amherst, and Yale, and was recently awarded the Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Rosie]

Lowkey really boring and hard to follow. Sorry.

[Peter]

Yet another book I read a few months ago and now look at blankly, trying to remember anything at all about it. I failed.

I cheat by riffling through it and discover that it more or less concerns a New York woman – a novelist – having a mid-life crisis following a diagnosis of heart problems. She has always been in control, adjusting reality to suit. Now reality hits back. Now she needs to take stock.

This involves quite a bit of back story and a large number of characters, past and present, all of whom – even the two husbands and a son – are minor players. Riffling is not enough to recall them all. The book is dense with people and incidents spanning at least three decades.

The back cover quotes Time as saying “She is one of those rare contemporaries whose work demands, and deserves, re-reading” – which is clearly correct, though I am not sure about “deserves”. Expensive Habits is well enough written in a sort of urban, literary, modernist-realist style, but it is all a bit bland - and clearly not memorable. I don't think I'll be re-reading it even if, perhaps, I should.

[Sharon S.]

Couldn’t get through the first chapter. Put it in the discard pile — which is where I found it. Moving on.