On a miserable January morning, Sarah is sitting on a plane to Tenerife, Spainโwithout her husband or her childrenโfor a week-long vacation. At the age of thirty, sheโs just realized that sheโs very angry with her life, her choices, and her familyโand that sheโs becoming a bitter bitch. For plane reading, she carries a copy of Erica Jongโs Fear of Flying and suddenly wishes it were 1975 instead of 2005โalthough she wonders how things have gotten so bad that all she craves is a full nightโs sleep instead of a zipless f**k.
Sarah never intended for things to turn out the way they have: She just dreamed of love like everyone else. But now sheโs sitting on the plane, thinking about all the injustices sheโs suffered. Thinking about how thoroughly fooled she was by the storybook promise of loveโthe one that makes us want to start a family. Thinking about all the women she knows who, like her, were drained of all their energy and sentenced to a family prisonโan inheritance passed down directly from generation to generation, from her restless motherโs eczema-covered dishpan hands to her own nervous over-achiever complex.
Angry and candid, Bitter Bitch is a wild, uncompromising novel, at the heart of which is one of the most important womenโs issues: How can we ever have an egalitarian society when we canโt even live in equality with those we love?