TO HELL WITH ALL THAT Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife

Julia Fletcher's chipper, brisk tone gives an efficient reading of Flanagan's conflicted ruminations. Flanagan questions major and minor decisions about working, raising children, and making a home. Fletcher's articulate voice smoothes over the mélange of essay topics that Flanagan has cobbled together. Fletcher does an admirable job establishing a consistent tone to express Flanagan's often contradictory thoughts about raising children and home care. She asks, for example, whether shopping for trendy containers counts as "house-cleaning." Flanagan's prose offers some bits of humor, which Fletcher delivers appropriately, but a title that seems to promise some true irreverence about the complications of daily life ultimately remains too inward-looking to truly satisfy. R.F. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 06]