Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

Written by Penelope Mortimer

Narrated by Robin Weaver

A breakthrough novel of suburban loneliness and subversion—“her style, spare and singular, cuts through the decades like a scalpel” (Rachel Cooke, The Observer)

Bourgeois housewife Ruth Whiting is “paralysed by triviality,” measuring out her days in coffee mornings, glasses of sherry, and bridge parties—routines that barely disturb the solitude of her existence. Her husband spends his weeknights in town; their daughter, eighteen-year-old Angela, is at Oxford; and their sons are at boarding school. Then Angela accidentally falls pregnant, and Ruth must keep her own past from repeating itself.

First published in 1958, Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting shocked critics with its “feminine rage” (New York Times). It captures the suffocation of a repressive marriage and the desperate longing for connection between a mother and daughter who must join forces in a man’s world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: McNally Editions
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781946022738

Penelope Mortimer

Penelope Mortimer (1918–1999) was the author of nine novels; one collection of short stories; two volumes of memoir, the Whitbread Prize-winning About Time and About Time Too; and a biography of the Queen Mother. Her screenwriting credits include the script for Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing (1964), which she co-wrote with her then husband John Mortimer. She was also a film critic for The Observer.

Reviews for Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book, written in 1958, seems more pertinent than ever after the overturning of Roe v. Wade"My personhood was erased and overwritten with MOTHER before I even knew who I was."Ruth is a sad and desperate housewife in suburban London. Her overbearing and cruel husband Rex works in the city and is home only on the weekends for the neighborly rounds of cocktail parties and Sunday brunches. Their boys are away at boarding school and their daughter Angela is in her first year at Oxford. As I began this sad story of Ruth's lonely life, I was immediately reminded of the lives of the women Betty Friedan described in her ground-breaking book The Feminine Mystique.Then Angela comes home to tell her mother she is pregnant. Ruth is immediately thrown back to her own youth and her own unwanted pregnancy (with Angela), which led to her marriage to Rex. She doesn't want her daughter to experience the same lack of choices and the consequences that she did. And so the quest for a safe abortion for Angela begins, a not so easy task in the 1950's when abortion was illegal in England (and probably most other countries).The emphasis on the plight of the 50's housewife is beautifully written. The book explores loneliness, isolation, and mental health (not to mention reproductive rights). Although the book is more than 60 years old, it felt very relevant to me.Recommended.3 1/2 starsFirst Line: "Ruth Whiting stepped out of the high train directly it stopped."Last line: "Avoiding the carelessly abandoned bicycles, the gum boots, she went into the house."