I immensely enjoyed this book because Lorna Landvik creates funny, slightly caricatured yet completely engaging strong female characters in Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons. I also love that the title is totally misleading because these women are anything but angry. They laugh with each other over the chaos that is life and remain friends through decades, failed marriages, betrayal, gossip, and even cancer. Each character has traits that I wish I had or at least could display more.
There's Slip, the spitfire. Faith, the reserved one. Audrey, the queen and sexual deviant. Merit, the scared yet strong one. and Kari, the big-hearted, big laughing mother-hen. Besides creating these wonderful characters and sharing practically their whole lives with us, Landvik also shows societal changes with a plot that covers decades and a variety of topics that are as diverse as the books that the group reads for an excuse to get together (which also leads to lively conversation!).
Any book that makes me go through a range of emotions is a winner, and Landvik does not disappoint. I cried, laughed, got angry, felt betrayed, and generally, wanted to be friends with these women. I am also a huge fan of the varying narrator structure--each of the five women tell their own story instead of an omniscient narrator or only one first-person narrator. Overall, Landvik took on an extremely ambitious novel (5 narrators, 40 years, and lots of controversial and difficult topics like domestic abuse, sexuality, friendship, cancer) and creates a lively, utterly engaging book that is downright fun and doesn't have time for any fluff.