Margaret's Reviews > The Home-Maker

Fisher is best known today for the children's book Understood Betsy, which I read and liked a few years ago, but she also wrote many novels for adults. This one is a Persephone reprint -- I should just eventually buy everything they've reprinted, as I haven't disliked one yet.

Evangeline Knapp is a smart, organized, determined woman, stuck at home in a role she despises; she loves her children, but she can't seem to sympathize with them, and her passion for cleanliness and organization has become an obsession in her house. Her husband Lester, on the other hand, is a dreamy, empathetic man who would love to write poetry but who is instead stuck in the role of earner, in a dreary job at a department store. When Lester is injured in an accident, the chance comes for the two to switch roles. The Home-Maker is a perceptive and often searing exploration of "traditional" family roles; Fisher is sympathetic to the characters and their dilemmas, but not at all to the society which forces them into the gender roles which make them miserable.