Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough
The new novel is out January 2011.
Preorder it on Amazon.
View a recent TV interview.
Imagine three generations of women living under one roof — a grandmother with a shoplifting habit, a recent divorcee who's given up on sex, and a teenager whose marijuana brownies get served a little more widely than she intended. In a starred review, Publisher's Weekly said, "There’s a rare honesty in Pennebaker’s work that allows for both empathy and schadenfreude as the women examine themselves and each other, and their inner lives have a winning warts-and-all air of authenticity. Pennebaker’s effort delivers right through to its hopeful but realistic conclusion."
Over the past 30 years
I've written young adult novels, essays, newspaper columns, magazine articles, humor books, and public radio commentaries. It's interesting — maybe even therapeutic — for me to pull much of this work together on a website.
My most recent work is the novel pictured above, WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKTHROUGH. It’s my first adult novel and it’s about three generations of women living under one roof – so it’s kind of a horror story, as you can imagine. You should buy several copies right now.
More than anything, WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKTHROUGH is about the complexity, craziness and humor of the mother-daughter relationship. It’s about how you can live very closely with other people – even people you love – and still have no idea what’s going on with their lives since you’re so focused on your own hopes and sorrows and private dramas. Three different voices narrate the novel: Ivy, the grandmother, who’s in her 70s and has lost much of her savings in the recession; her daughter Joanie, the almost-50 divorcee who’s re-entering the job market; and 15-year-old granddaughter Caroline, who’s socially invisible in her big high school.
I also blog at www.geezersisters.com. I hope you join me at both of these sites. And remember to buy WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKTHROUGH at Amazon.com.
-- Ruth Pennebaker
Ruth Pennebaker blogs about women, men, families, marriage, politics, aging, writing and anything else that occurs to her at her Fabulous Geezersisters' blog, www.geezersisters.com.
Geezersisters Posts:
Snappy Quotes from Ruth Pennebaker, in case Bartlett's is Interested
ON NEUROTICISM: I was just born this way — one of those canaries they use in mine shafts that drop dead when dangerous gases are leaking out. Great system for the miners, but it kind of sucks to be the bird.
ON FAITH HEALING: I even relied on Oral Roberts once to heal my eyes. He was on TV, empowering the lame to walk, the bent to straighten, the drunk to sober up, but evidently couldn't bother with a 10-year-old girl who had an astigmatism. Listen, you lose your faith at crucial moments like that.
ON AGING: As usual, I pondered this whole aging dilemma in a very confused way, wondering why I'm far happier than I was when I was younger, but I’m still not that enthusiastic about crow's feet and imminent death and ageist condescension from smart-alecky teenage store clerks who are going to be really sorry when all their tattoos are wrinkled, ha, ha, ha.
ON TEXAS WOMEN'S VOICES: Voices that are soft and low, an excellent thing in a woman, have rarely been observed in a gathering of two or more Texas women.
ON PERSPECTIVE: My husband worries about immortality. I worry about next week.
ON MIDDLE-AGED CENTERFOLDS: You know what? This isn’t about looking good for your age. It’s about looking good for your daughter’s age.
ON FASHION: I’ll give you a tip. My personal acid test is: If I wear this, will I have to hold in my stomach?
ON HOLIDAY NEWSLETTERS: Stop bragging about your kids. Many important psychological studies have shown that children whose parents yak about them in their annual newsletters suffer from tragically low self-esteem, a startlingly high rate of acne, bad posture, twitching and hats worn backward and, worst of all, they have no chance whatsoever of getting into an Ivy League school.
ON HOLLYWOOD CASTING: I can do math. When a woman is in her 40s or 50s, her romantic lead needs to be 30 years older. So, if I go to Hollywood and become a movie actress at my age, the only men I could co-star with are already dead.
ON JOINING A SOCCER TEAM: I’ll never forget the first time we lined up on the field for our very first game, facing the other team eyeball-to-eyeball. This is emblazoned in my memory as the only time in my life I wished I weighed more.
ON SARAH PALIN: Somebody, I think morosely, staring at the TV, the beehive, the blankly moronic gaze through the glasses, is going to have to do something about Palin’s accent. The word “grating” only begins to convey how truly awful it is. Pass the Pepto-Bismol and splash it on the rocks. Make it a double, baby. I’m in pain.