by JULIET WATERS

It’s hard to take neo-conservative poster girl Danielle Crittenden seriously, which may be the real danger of her first novel, Amanda Bright @ Home.

A few years ago, Crittenden stirred up controversy with her manifesto What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman. Crittenden argued that the smart new feminist should settle down and start breeding as early as possible, skipping the bachelorette years and postponing higher education and career until the kids are ready for school. It’s easier, she believes, to become a career woman later in life than a mother. Not that she’d know. Her stepfather Peter Worthington has been publishing Crittenden in the Toronto Sun since the age of 15, and she never bothered with college.

Last year Crittenden blipped on the radar again, humiliating herself and her husband, David Frum, a former White House speechwriter. Frum resigned soon after Crittenden sent out a mass e-mail gushing over his genius at coming up with the phrase "axis of evil." When called by the reporter who broke the story, Crittenden refused to comment, claiming she felt enough "like Lucy Ricardo" as it was. (Frum claimed he was planning on resigning anyway and would only take credit for the word "axis.")

But it’s actually Crittenden’s Lucy Ricardoness that’s so scary. She’s not as funny, but her schtick has a certain appeal. She’s a neurotic, nurturing voice who assures women that working and mothering at the same time is impossible and, worse, unpleasant. So let’s all have a big laugh at our silly expectations, and "modern" antics. Time to wave bye-bye to post-feminism and hello to retro-feminism.

Lucille Ball, mind you, was one of the shrewdest businesswomen of her time. And Crittenden is no naif either. Amanda Bright @ Home is carefully crafted to lure readers with the expectation that they’re getting the latest brand of motherhood vérité (see back cover comparison to Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It. Next see Amazon.com customer reviews by angry readers who fell for the trick). Unenlightened readers will instead get a shrill-pitched, depressing morality tale about a thirtysomething liberal mother who wears batik pants and can’t cope. After a reverse "click" moment, she decides to quit her unfulfilling public relations job. All around is evidence of the evils of progress: desperate, narcissistic, childless career women; pathetic stay-at-home dads; fascistic daycare educators; Amanda’s appalled feminist mother.

Amanda has only two sources of strength. Bob, her ambitious, preachy husband works for the Justice Department prosecuting the CEO of computer monopoly Megabyte. Liz is an old friend from college. A women’s studies major at Brown, Liz now lectures against the evils of women aping capitalist modes of power. Super stay-at-home mom, she will teach Amanda to "own" her problems and become a more centred woman and enthusiastic house cleaner.

When Amanda opens her big yap to a journalist about a social encounter between Bob and the other side, she gets him fired. It all works out in the end, however, when he takes a job with Megabyte and starts making half a million a year. By the end of this dull, nasty novel, the couple has made the transition from struggling, dowdy middle-class liberals, to exciting rich neo-cons.

Crittenden is no competitor to Pearson. Close to a month after its release Amanda Bright is ranked #504 on Amazon, while I Don’t Know How She Does It is still holding steady in the top 25. Overall, women still seem more interested in the challenges of working mothers than retreating mothers. The only victims of retro-feminism are likely to be retro-feminists themselves, so why should we care? Because if things don’t work out, it’s not going to be the Danielle Crittendens who will be there to help. And it won’t be the working women because they’re too busy. So who will it be? That’s the problem, and it’s not a funny one.

Amanda Bright @ Home by Danielle Crittenden,
Warner Books, hc, 326pp, $34.95