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Published Aug 2021
208 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
The uncannily relevant, deliciously clear-eyed collected stories of a critically acclaimed, award-winning "American literary treasure" (Boston Globe), ripe for rediscovery--with a foreword by Elizabeth Strout.
From her many well-loved novels, Hilma Wolitzer--now ninety-one years old and at the top of her game--has gained a reputation as one of our best fiction writers, who "raises ordinary people and everyday occurrences to a new height." (Washington Post) These collected short stories--most of them originally published in magazines including Esquire and the Saturday Evening Post, in the 1960s and 1970s, along with a new story that brings her early characters into the present--are evocative of an era that still resonates deeply today.
In the title story, a bystander tries to soothe a woman who seems to have cracked under the pressures of her life. And in several linked stories throughout, the relationship between the narrator and her husband unfolds in telling and often hilarious vignettes. Of their time and yet timeless, Wolitzer's stories zero in on the domestic sphere with wit, candor, grace, and an acutely observant eye. Brilliantly capturing the tensions and contradictions of daily life, Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket is full of heart and insight, providing a lens into a world that was often unseen at the time, and often overlooked now-reintroducing a beloved writer to be embraced by a whole new generation of readers.
"Completing the trajectory of her early triumphs with a pandemic masterpiece, Wolitzer takes our breath away." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"In this sage collection of stories, many of which were published in the 1960s and '70s, Wolitzer considers love, marriage, and motherhood...Throughout, Wolitzer captures the feel of each moment with characters who charm with their honesty. The result is a set of engaging time capsules." - Publishers Weekly
"[Wolitzer] shows us the ever-shifting alliances of family life and ways in which love can both change and endure." - New York Times
"Hilma Wolitzer's Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket is electric: with wit, with rage, with grief, with the kind of prose that makes you both laugh and thrill to the darker, spikier emotions just barely visible under the bright surface. What a wonderful collection of stories." - Lauren Groff
"Wit, wisdom, and warmth form the foundation of this sparkling collection. Wolitzer is a natural-born storyteller whose rigor, attention, and generosity create miracles on each and every page." - Tayari Jones
"Hilma Wolitzer sees the miraculous, and the tragic, in modest lives and domestic particulars-wonders that might pass as ordinary events to the untrained eye. She magnifies the world. She insists, in one gorgeous sentence after another, that there's no such thing as a usual hour, let alone a usual day." - Michael Cunningham
"In this acutely observed collection, Hilma Wolitzer considers the bonds of married love, emotional and erotic. With her trademark dry wit and abiding compassion, she explores the telling details of everyday life in ways that are unsettling, insightful, and wholly original. These stories will linger in your mind and get under your skin. They shimmer with life." - Christina Baker Kline
This information about Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Hilma Wolitzer is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. She has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, New York University, Columbia University, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her first published story appeared when she was thirty-six, and her first novel eight years later. Her many stories and novels have drawn critical praise for illuminating the dark interiors of the American home. She lives in New York City.
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