Someone We Know: A Novel

In her groundbreaking 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, Betty Frieden explored “the problem that has no name,” a nagging feeling of emptiness and discontent afflicting suburban housewives, akin to an existential despair:

Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—‘Is this all?’ (Friedan, Betty. “The Problem That Has No Name.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 100 no. 9, 2010).

In her book, Frieden discusses the cultural and societal fallout of confining intelligent, imaginative, and, in many cases, highly educated women in the claustrophobic monoculture of the suburbs, which offer few outlets for their mental energy, ambition, or sense of individuality. She also noted that many housewives, bored by routine and deprived of the sense of validation and appreciation that might come from a career, looked for personal fulfillment through sex, often leading to extramarital affairs. Others tried to “live through” their children, becoming overinvolved in their children’s lives. In Someone We Know, the young Amanda Pierce and the middle-aged Becky Harris both embody this “nameless” ennui: Jaded by their marriages, suburban surroundings, and unstimulating sex lives, both women have extramarital affairs based on proximity—Amanda with two of her neighbors; Becky with a younger man, Amanda’s husband, who lives directly behind her.