The Pumpkin Eater

Synopsis

A nameless woman sits on a therapist’s couch, trying to make sense of a life that seems to be coming apart. She is the mother of a large brood of children and the wife of Jake Armitage, a successful screenwriter. Together they are building a great glass house in the country, imagining that this new life will somehow make everything whole.

But beneath the fantasy of domestic happiness lie depression, betrayal, infidelity, aging, and the exhausting demands of motherhood. As her carefully constructed world begins to fracture, she moves through doctors, husbands, movie stars, grocery lists, nursery rhymes, memories, dreams, and breakdowns, searching for a way to pull it all together. A surreal, darkly comic novel about motherhood, marriage, monogamy, and the terrifying possibility of falling apart.

About the Author

Penelope Mortimer (1918–1999) was a British novelist, journalist, and critic. She wrote numerous novels and short stories, worked as a film critic for the Observer, and contributed regularly to The New Yorker. The Pumpkin Eater, first published in 1962, was adapted into a 1964 film starring Anne Bancroft and Peter Finch, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter.

Daphne Merkin is a writer and cultural critic whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, and The New York Times Magazine. She contributes an introduction to this edition.

Publisher

New York Review Books

Publication Date

April 26, 2011

Format

Paperback

Pages

224

Subjects

Love & Other Disasters · Literary Fiction · Dark Comedy · Marriage · Motherhood · Women’s Fiction · Psychological Fiction

ISBN

9781590173824