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A WOMAN’S LIFE: The Story of an...

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A WOMAN’S LIFE: The Story of an Ordinary American and Her Extraordinary Generation by Susan Cheever (Quill: $10; 254 pp.). Rather than chronicle the achievements of a wealthy, childless woman, Susan Cheever wanted to document the life of a “typical” woman of her own generation. She chose Linda Green--a schoolteacher in suburban Boston who has been married twice and is the mother of two girls. Green’s attempts to reconcile the ideals she was taught in the ‘50s and ‘60s with the grim realities of life in the ‘90s encompass many of the dilemmas facing American women. Cheever writes skillfully, but the narrative frequently degenerates into victim-speak: When Green makes a bad choice, it’s invariably someone else’s fault--her parents’, her husbands’, her brother’s, the school system’s, society’s, her children’s--never her own.

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