EVERYTHING WE WANTED

by Lindsay Maracotta ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1984

Easy-reading pulp about how three women, teenage victims of 1960s activist/Lib fallout, wrestle with faltering love and career aspirations in their 30s. Karen Auden, Long Island child of a kooky mother and an indifferent father, knows that she's just an unpopular ""Brown Person"" in high school. Andrea Herry, from St. Louis, has a grim, straitlaced upbringing. And Jean Ferguson, a ""tomboy,"" is forever competing with brother Denny for those never-received kudos from Dad--to whom she was ""just a girl."" So, by the time the girls meet at a Massachusetts college, all three have had miserable relationships with boys. But now in college real sex is in: ""do it, do it, do it!"" There are new rules--and new problems: men overnight in dorms; yeast infections; acid trips; dates (dope and stereo) that always seem to end in that single bed. Then, as for careers, they're free at last--but for what? Jean, starting in a Manhattan typing pool, carries on her childhood competition to be the best, becoming right-hand woman to a married conglomerate exec who teaches her the ropes: they'll fall in love, have a doomed affair--and Jean is soon on the way to starting her own conglomerate of small business services. Andrea studies law in Chicago, eventually marries cute Rick, but she just doesn't measure up sexually--despite manuals and a water bed. And Kate toils at low-paying Manhattan office work, mired in a live-in affair with a graphic designer who finds responsible love too ""possessive"" and who alternates lovemaking with verbal (even physical) abuse. The point? Well, men are certainly awful--but women today are ""schizzy. They claimed they wanted men to be sensitive. . . but down under it all they were still hung up on the Marlboro Man."" So the three women will go through crises of loneliness, depression, and worse (jail for love-desperate Jean). . . till they all find real love and/or courage. Sweepings from the Women's Room broom-closet--but likely to find an audience with its simplistic treatment of trendy post-feminist issues.

Pub Date: June 15, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION