Maureen Howard, who first drew vast consideration in 1965 together with her novel “Bridgeport Bus,” which got here to be considered a precursor to second-wave feminism, and went on to write down formidable, well-regarded books for 45 extra years, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 91.
Her daughter, Loretta Howard, confirmed the loss of life.
Ms. Howard’s novels, a few of which took Irish American assimilation as a theme, typically featured ladies confronting challenges in marriage and society. Three successive midcareer works, “Grace Abounding” (1982), “Costly Habits” (1986) and “Pure Historical past” (1992), had been finalists for the celebrated PEN/Faulkner Award.
Her last 4 books, as she described them, had been thematically a seasonal quartet — first winter with “A Lover’s Almanac” (1998), then spring with “Huge as Life” (2001), summer season with “The Silver Display” (2004) and, lastly, autumn with “The Rags of Time” (2009). Paul Slovak, her editor on these 4 books, which had been printed by Viking, stated by e mail that Ms. Howard’s works “featured an formidable interaction of historical past, politics, artwork and life as they tracked the tales of households and particularly of spirited, formidable ladies, offering a broad tackle American life during the last 60 years.”
Ms. Howard, who additionally taught at Princeton, Yale and different establishments through the years, was in her early 30s when she printed her first novel, “Not a Phrase About Nightingales,” in 1962. “Bridgeport Bus,” three years later, was a few 35-year-old virgin named Mary Agnes who lives together with her mom, not notably fortunately:
“After I go dwelling my mom and I play a cannibal recreation; we eat one another through the years, tender morsel by morsel till there may be nothing left however dry bone and wig.”
Supply: NY Times