Fredrica Wagman Playing House

Annotation

When Playing House appeared in 1973, Publishers Weekly hailed it, “A probing descent into madness that will fascinate the same audience that appreciated I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.” This nationally bestselling story of one woman’s struggle with the lasting effects of a childhood sexual relationship with her brother shocked American readers; it remains a literary work of enduring quality and value. In his foreword Philip Roth writes, “The traumatized child; the institutionalized wife; the haunting desire; the ghastly business of getting through the day – what is striking about Wagman’s treatment of these contemporary motifs is the voice of longing in which the heroine shamelessly confesses to the incestuous need that is at once her undoing and her only hope.”