- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Lippincott; First Edition edition (1955)
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000LBFBZC
- Product Dimensions: 18 x 12.4 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 318 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,059,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The only way to make it though this tough life is to laugh through the tears....Betty sure did., Sep 1 2008
By Bluejeanroy - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Onions in the Stew (Hardcover)
The above write has obvious not read Betty MacDonald's other books that would explain why she feels the way she doses about such issues as why she dislikes Indians and why she like the Japanese family. Just like anyone it was based on her own experiences in life. (The Egg and I explains her feelings toward the Indians and the Plague and I explains why she gave the Japanese the benefit of the doubt.) All of us have our own prejudices even if we don't want to admit it. Why read a book if you don't want to see things from the point of view of the author? After all "this" book does not claim to be the autobiography of Betty MacDonald so there are likely some embellishments here and there but that does not take away from the charm and humor that this book has to offer.If you like to read the Little House Books when you were little. (Also much of which was embellished by the way but still a wonderful series giving an idea of what it was like to grow up as a pioneer) Then I promise you that as an adult you will love this book.
Reading Betty MacDonald's books has taught me much in the way of tolerance and friendship even as an adult in my late 20's . Instead of being annoyed with someone and just disliking them because they are different I try to sit back and view it as entreating is instead of annoying. If we were all the same it would be a boring world. I not only recommend this book but all of Betty's books. (the only one I have not read is her auto-biography but I look forward to reading that as well.)
The only way to make it though this tough life is to laugh through the tears....Betty sure did.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
GREAT READ, Oct 20 2009
By Tracy Sundberg "bookophile" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Onions in the Stew (Hardcover)
Betty MacDonald is a wonderful writer, local to the Seattle area, and surprisingly unknown by many. Although some of her books are out of print, some are not. The most famous are the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series for kids, and the Egg and I. My favorite, however, is Onions in the Stew. It takes place on Vashon Island in the 1950s, and has Betty raising her teenage daughters with her 2nd husband. As always, she is very, very funny and at the same time aware of nature as well as human nature. This is one of my favorite books.
4 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Slick Little 50s Bestseller About 40s Middle-Class Puget Bohemians, July 5 2008
By margot "Little person in big city." - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Onions in the Stew (Hardcover)
When I was little I thought this book was fabulous, a true-to-life account of homelife dysfunction as seen through the gimlet eyes of a hard-drinkin', hard-smokin' working mom in the Seattle area. I had no idea Betty MacDonald was mostly famous for the Egg book, and I didn't know what the Egg book was.Now I read it again many years later and am bowled over by how tame it was. Not only that, but by how offensively slick and salable MacDonald's prose style was. Well of course it was; writing was a business, and she knew how to pander to her editors and readers. I doubt anyone ever nailed the sassy-hausfrau idiom as well as Betty MacDonald, though her example certainly inspired lots of imitators (Jean Kerr, possibly Erma Bombeck).
This sort of slick commercial writing preserves, like a fly in amber, the accepted prejudices and sanctioned attitudes of the era. Not necessarily what the author or the readers think, but what the author and editors assume the readers think they ought to think. A second-guessing political correctness that continues today but with very different results.
In Betty's day it was thought to be very bright and sassy to say you just didn't like Indians and they were a nuisance (The Egg and I) or to be whimsical about a Japanese family in the U-District that gets sent to an internment camp. It didn't matter whether this reflects Betty's own point of view, it was just something that was expected make her readers purr with delight.
I get the idea that popular writers today--I am speaking mostly of TV and movies, since books are no longer mainstream--accomplish the same thing by making lighthearted banter about those cruel people who refuse to sign on to the idea of "same-sex marriage", or who think that negroes are not merely funny-looking white people. These "witticisms" don't necessarily speak to the actual assumptions of the average person, but they do try to anticipate what the bien-pensant bromide in the street thinks he ought to think.
Another point entirely... Funny how your mental images of the characters are determined by your own state in life. The two daughters in the book were old, sophisticated teenagers when I read by the book in my own pre-teen years. Now they're just little kids, barely out of rompers.
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