House Husband Book

When his wife, Jo, is offered her dream job, Lincoln Menner leaves his thriving landscape business in Los Angeles and moves to Rochester, New York. This will be his chance to start over, spend a little time with their three-year-old daughter, and finally do things right at home.

But Linc had no idea what it really meant to be a househusband: to stay home every day, folding laundry, cleaning soap scum, and teaching his little girl to use the potty. To be ignored at parties by his wife’s colleagues who see him as just a homemaker. Though he soon has the house humming, Linc misses the outside world. Most of all he misses Jo, who works too late and barely notices the fabulous dinners he slaves over. Drastic action must be taken to make his efficiently run house truly a home, sweet home. And Linc knows he is just the man for the job!

Publishers Weekly

The novel of feminist awakening is given an unexpected twist in Hudler's entertaining debut: its protagonist is a man. Lincoln Menner, once a California landscape designer, is now a stay-at-home dad who knows every creak and crevice of his huge suburban Rochester, N.Y., house. He is plagued by insecurities about wife Jo's high-profile job, three-year-old daughter Violet's schooling and development and his own wrestling with wanting and not wanting to be the perfect man to everyone. In a burst of self-pity, he contemplates his situation: "I felt as helpless as Amelia Earhart, alive on some island, reading a copy of Aviation Today that had washed up on the beach." Meanwhile, Linc's mother, Carol, a deferential wife who temporarily escapes her unimaginative car-salesman husband after stealing one of his own vehicles and driving off to explore the country and herself, provides an alternate voicing of desire and longing through her on-the-road e-mails to her son. The themes of career, family and power struggles between the sexes are prosaic, and the occasional recipes inserted into the text seem out of place, but Linc's plaintive observations about passing days alone and, finally, his self-acceptance, redeem his narrative. 5-city author tour. (May) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.