Books like The Woman Destroyed

Rich and powerful writing in these three novellas. I will definitely read more of this author. SPOILERS FOLLOW BELOW FOR ALL 3 NOVELLAS! The first novella, The Age of Discretion, centers around the aging process and the end of careers of both husband and wife. In addition, there’s the bitter disappointment the woman feels after the son she has ‘groomed’ to follow in her footsteps as a professor turns thirty and changes career and political outlook to go into government service. His mother feels it’s all about his wife and father-in-law pushing him to make more money and get a ‘real’ Job. Amazingly she turns against her son in an incredibly brutal way. She throws her son out of her house and says things like “I cannot love anyone I do not respect.” And to her husband: “Do you think I ought to see him again?” [This is their son!]The couple is both around 60. He still works as a scientist but feels only younger people can contribute. “Great scientists are valuable to science in the first half of their lives and harmful in the second.” [quote from Bachelard] She argues with him until her latest book that she thought of as 'filled with new insights’ is panned by both critics and friends as a summary of her earlier work. “In earlier days I never used to worry about old people. I looked upon them as the dead whose legs still kept moving.”The second novella, The Monologue, is a bitter screed by a woman left alone and abandoned at age 44. Her daughter, off on her own, died five years ago. “It’s flying in the face of nature that my own brother my own mother should prefer my ex-husband to me.” And: “I wanted decent clean children I didn’t want Francis to become a fairy like Nanard.” “I’m not ill I live alone because your swine of a father ditched me he buttered me up then he tortured me he even knocked me about….I have weapons I’ll use them he’ll come back to me I shan’t go on rotting all alone in this dump with those people on the next floor who trample me underfoot and the ones next door who wake me every morning with their radio and no one to bring me so much as a crust when I’m hungry. All those fat cows have a man to protect them and kids to wait on them and me nothing…” She envisions her enemies roasting in hell: “You owe me this revenge, God. I insist that you grant it to me.” And, of course, through this screed, she reveals so much of herself to us so that we see why she has been abandoned. The title story, The Woman Destroyed, is written as a diary over six months or so. A woman has a husband and two daughters, one locally and one in the US that she seldom sees. Her husband admits to her that he is having an affair. With the advice of her friends she agrees to let him continue with it, taking the attitude that “men his age do these things; it will pass.” That turns out to be a mistake. All her life, she only worked in the home. He still has his career, his wife, his mistress and good times. She has nothing. Even with her women friends all she talks about is her situation with her husband. When she hears his key in the lock “…there was that horrible taste in my mouth – the taste of dread. (The same exactly, as when I used to go to see my father dying in the nursing home.)” “It seems to me that I no longer have anything whatever to do. I always used to be busy. Now everything – knitting, cooking, reading, putting on a record – everything seems pointless.” “Women who do nothing can’t stand those who work.” (Did her husband’s mistress really say that?) Good stories and excellent writing.Paris street scene from dreamstime.comPhoto of the author from alpha.aeon.co/images