Loving Hands at Home Author:Diane Johnson The Frys are a close-knit group -- mother, father, three married sons, 11 children -- who gather every Sunday for a family dinner and browbeating session by Mother Fry. Karen, the only non-Mormon and the narrator, is a little nut who fancies herself the only nonconformist in the bunch. (On her "secret life days" she answers help wanted... more » ads in person.) But from one Sunday dinner to another, it develops that there are even more paradoxical Frys among the dutiful homemakers.
Joan, mother of seven, finds strength through sex with visiting handymen. Patty, the perfect hausfrau, is adjusting with difficulty to her husband's affair with his lady boss. Even Mother Fry, a hilariously caricatured matriarch, reveals unplumbed depths of venom when under the influence of home-cooked mushrooms (picked on the grounds of U.C.L.A.).« less